A method for execution, when a generic computing device is paired with a specific computing device (SCD) token, begins with the SCD token sending distributed storage network (DSN) access request to DSN memory via the generic computing device, wherein the DSN access request identifies SCD operation information that is stored as one or more of sets of encoded data slices in the DSN memory and wherein the SCD operation information was encoded using a dispersed storage error encoding function to produce the plurality of sets of encoded data slices. Then, the SCD token receives the one or more of sets of encoded data slices from the DSN memory via the generic computing device and decodes the one or more of sets of encoded data slices to retrieve the SCD operation information and enables the generic computing device to function as an SCD in accordance with the SCD operation information.