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The Amazing Lego DAT Tape Changer
lizardboy writes: "This is for the Lego loving computer geek with large backup needs. The Lego DAT Tape changer. It can be interfaced with any platform supporting Lego mindstorms. I have used it with OSX and Linux using dump and NQC with some custom shell scripts. It also works under a Mac OS 9 using Retrospect and RCX."
This would have been far more useful if it would have been constructed with an erector set....
... the lego Rubik's cube solver : that thing was so cool !
Can it be setup to hit the reboot key on the Lego Webserver?
:)
That'd be mighty spiffy.
Anybody else remember those old computerized Lego sets for the AppleIIs? I wonder if those could be interfaced to the mind storms, I know of a school that has quite a few of those lying around, it is just that all of their AppleII interface boards died.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I wonder how many boxes of legos would be required to emulate the 300+ cartridge loaded in one of the data centers at work.
At least replacement parts would be inexpensive!
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Could this be made in to a cheap CD changer. or even a cd-r and cd-rw changer. Because I don't a tape drive.
Where are the little Lego people? This is cool, but it seems a more effective presentation would include the little lego figures into this contraption. Put some on the lift, some with construction gear, some at the base with the control unit in lab coats working on mini control panels. Some at the local coffee machine or guiding a tour, etc.
:P
Still a very cool way of setting up a changer, but it would be more fun to add some realism to it
Cool, maybe. Functionally useless...well, yes. When are we going to get the mech suits we've been promised? All we have now is a geeky ghetto scooter.
He needs to build a full Silo out of Legos. Something 6 feet in diameter that will hold several thousand DAT tapes. I wonder just how many bricks that would take...
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
I don't know why I would think of this, but at where I currently work, there is a very large area between where all of the computers are, and if there is something that could make the tape backup process even more automated, it would be better. Time could be spent on better things, like figuring out how to slowly learn how to not use microsoft products, or actually fixing computers. imagine, this could save 5 minutes at least whenever a tape backup is needed, that really adds up with incrimental backups, or especially if there are regular full backups, more tapes to be changed.
The color scheme is something no marketing department will ever agree to. He should have used more beige blocks.
I also think that it should have some of the littel lego men standing around looking at the thing. Also needs more flashing lights.
...but I'd rather invest 40 bucks in an autoloader that understands SCSI commands...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I think I am all lego'd out for now.
Are legos the new trendy material crap?
holy smokes, that site got slashdotted to hell within 7 minutes of being posted...
:-)
ouch... watch the guys face as his little lego bricks melt all over his backup tapes
/me dives into his closet looking for his old macintosh and his legos with a SPARKLE in his eye.
From the looks of this thing it also loads a DAT tape of the inventor snoring, and waves a fake arm around in the bed, if his Mom turns his bedroom door handle when he's taking a day off...
...Oh god how many Matthew Broderick references can slashdot handle in a single day!
:)
ps - posted on a Powerbook 667. Long live Apple
I envy you,
M, only £2500 away from buying a TiBook...
Hey! How about that? Meta-Whining :)!
Seriously, it's part of the community and the escape. Just roll your eyes and move onto the next post.
bah, it does not do the lot in the RCX's :(
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
These fscking slideshows made with iTools don't work in mozilla.
Ciao,
--Ben
I don't know what you are talking about. Unless somthing was deleted by the time I'm reading this, no one did any crazy moding or anything. Perhaps you meant to reply to someone elses thread. Your first lesson as a n00b: learn where to post.
Wouldnt it be cool if lego made actual tools that werent marketed towards kids. Such that they would be designed to do things of this nature, all purpose reusable engineering kits. Not that I'm too cool for lego's or anything...
Then I'd actually be able to use my CD-R/RW burner for back-ups. (I know - not the ideal device, it's just what I have available)
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
http://drew.corrupt.net/lp/series1.html
Why The Rescheduling of Marijuana Brief Is Important and Unique in the Legal Battle to Make Medical Marijuana Available
By Jon Gettman
The last time the rescheduling of marijuana was subject to a legal challenge, the legalization movement made a huge mistake in stipulating that marijuana had a high potential for abuse. We thought that this would simplify the proceedings and allow us to focus attention on marijuana's medical use. Instead the Drug Enforcement Administration used this stipulation to disregard the testimony of medical-marijuana patients, on the grounds that the high abuse potential of the drug rendered their testimony suspect and unreliable.
I was president of NORML at that time, and I'm the one who formally signed off on that stipulation. It was a mistake, and one of the primary purposes of these long proceedings is to correct it.
The plain scientific fact is that marijuana does not, and never has had, the same abuse potential as dangerous drugs such as heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methamphetamine. Under the law, this means that it cannot be retained in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. That means that the government is legally obligated to make marijuana available in a legal, controlled market to patients who require it for medical and therapeutic use. It also means that marijuana prohibition has never been justified under the provisions of the CSA, something almost every state has already recognized with respect to scheduling under state laws.
In order to perpetuate marijuana's illegal status as a Schedule I substance, the DEA has resorted to a rigged game. They have refused to assess its relative abuse potential, as required by law, they have refused to consider important data required by the courts and Congress-primarily the impact their decision has on the people most affected by it-and they have refused to allow the public to participate in these important proceedings.
The petition was filed in 1995, well before state medical-marijuana initiatives were passed. Federal rescheduling would provide a solution to the problem of providing legal medical marijuana to patients in those states, as well as in every state in the country.
The support of HIGH TIMES for this project has been invaluable, for it has provided the independence required to insulate this action from the pressures of fundraising and self-interested organizational agendas. Indeed, the national drug-policy-reform movement has largely ignored this action, because it is not consistent with their agenda to exploit the medical-marijuana issue to further a larger agenda of drug-policy reform. Many medical-marijuana advocates have argued that marijuana should be moved from Schedule I to Schedule II, which also requires that a drug have a high potential for abuse, and makes the same mistake we made in litigation of the first rescheduling petition. The problem with an approach that stipulates that marijuana is a drug with a high potential for abuse is that it is a sellout of all non-medical marijuana users, implying that because they are using a "dangerous" drug that the laws criminalizing them are appropriate. It is also a sellout of medical users, in that it insists on unreasonably tight restrictions on their access to marijuana.
While rescheduling will not make marijuana available for recreational use, it will establish once and for all that marijuana does not have, and never has had, a high potential for abuse. This will have a profound effect on public debate over additional marijuana-law reform, as it will have established that reform advocates have always been correct in their argument that marijuana is not a dangerous drug.
Finally, it is worth stressing, that the specific objective of this legal action is to give all interested parties, including all medical-marijuana patients, an opportunity to comment and participate in this public policy process.
>
Ahh yes, and here's where we have our fully redundant Linux cluster with an uptime of 2 years. If anything does ever go wrong, we have a Lego Mindstorms backup system in place. I think we can trust that the database will never be lost.
And here we have...
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
After seeing all of this lego crap on here, I can feel my wallet telling me to, "BUY LEGOS AND MAKE FANCY THINGS!!!"... Please stop doing this to me Mr. Slashdot!!! Its a conspiracy!!!!!
The Loader
From the right
Load and unload slides
Tape being unloaded
Arm loader from the rear
system to eject tape
Back of loader
Lifting system
Just so you know, I've been enjoying the hell out of these posts since I fist saw one.
However, I fucking dreamed about a killer ATM and a man in a red hat two nights ago. I woke up trying to figure out where the hell that imagery had come from...now I remember.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Ahh....but does it sport a six nines availability rating? From the looks of it, more like 4,5 tops. Maybe it just needs a little hot glue...
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Imagine, recommending to the boss that you could save the company thousands of dollars by not buying that enterprise tape library, but instead buy a Lego MindStorm kit and an extra box of Legos!
Actually, this is the exact thing I'll be suggesting to my boss tomorrow after I do some more investigation! This is perfect for use with enterprise products such as Tivoli Storage Manager.
Actually, you could quite easily scale this up; simply add more single tape devices to your server, each with its own Lego tape loader.
Way cool!
My son is two. He plays with Lego, and Duplos (which I believe _can_ be pluralized.) Dan, my son, does _not_ have a job. He goes to school, but, he plays with Lego bricks when he's there (note how I neatly avoided pluralizing Lego!) so that doesn't count.
I think if you are playing with a product like Lego to accomplish something you might have too much time on your hands.
My son certainly does. And this guy... a Mac loading up to iTools (s/b sTools for SLOW) he must be sick with all the free time he's enjoying.
This
...yeah but their technical support is aweful.
I had to listen to 15 minutes or so of baby gurgling on the phone before speaking to a tech they call "mother". Maybe some obscure Dan Aykroyd reference.
Then, finaly, when a tech arrived at my office, all he did was cry and suck on ejector mechanism.
I'm never buying from this company again.
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I'll only be happy with Legos when they can brew me up a perfect cup of coffee.....
Nate Tobik
ahh, the egg in the basket..
if I replaced the "tape drive" with a crayon, and the set of tapes with Index Cards, I could use it as a redunt "CowboyNeal w/Index Cards and a Crayon"...
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
...how I can make use of LEGOs as new tools of terror?
How on earth did this get a +5 interesting rating? Sure it's cool, but +5? Aren't there better things to mod?
It would have been more useful if it could do
BSD rdump.
Are you having two separate conversations with yourself?
I want to build a lego robot that does nothing but hit refresh in my web browser and check slashdot for new stories, and then submits first post! w00t
-I'll Bash you in the forhead.
Well I fucked the Little Baby Jesus so FUCK HIM!
Lizard Boy
you know, you should archive these somewhere, I'd be interested in re-reading them sometime.
Thats actually kinda interesting (even if it is way offtopic)
I live in a giant bucket.
Very cool; I can now say we are a nation with too much time on our hands....it is damn cool though.
-ted
I go to the site and all I see is a bunch of pics which link to larger versions of said pics. With text at the bottom, being w/o a linux drive working all I can do is look through XP. Is the site changed or is it not really a slide show??? If I had my linux drive not die would i be able to boot that up and see an error, or was there a neat slide show taken down???
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
If seen from above:
I think that dupping a cd is easy - but labeling it after is the time consuming part. You could also handle multiple CD drives at a time.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
lest i jam my wiener up your beaner.
Suck my ass. Why does slashdot suck so bad? Who designed this piece of shit messageboard? Why am I here? Oh yeah I remember, because every time I post I have to sift through some obtuse list of posts to find mine in no particular order. assholes.
Does this make anyone else feel like they're playing Max Payne? =P
Lego is obviously good for prototyping these sorts of products, but it would be cool if there was a Lego compiler that would scan the completed model and produce parts by eliminating all but the minimum number of inter-connections required for efficient assembly, and replacing the Lego connectors with more permanent ones.
..is a lego DAT tape changer, which can not only change DAT tapes, but build more copies of itself, given the appropriate lego blocks required. These in turn would create more..
...to think that some people say Macs are just toys!
The management is so incompetent where I work and their always looking for some way to cut costs. This could cost some people their jobs. Wow, I hope that they don't see this or the tape operators might be looking for new work!
So, this would mean that now I have actual justification to submit a purchase order for Lego. :)
Superb
Maybe we could make a LEGO toy that taught people not to say "DAT tape" (when DAT already stands for "Digital Audio Tape").
If you have that much trouble with acronyms, I suggest using acronymfinder.com.
Radars, space guns, rockets, blinking coloured lights, and a little dude in a visored helmet with a spanner at a console... Ian
How does OSX handle tape backup? Is it more like Windows, Linux, or Mac OS 9?
Tape media is by far the cheapest media, the problem with it is that you usually need many tapes.
This means that you have to swap tapes in and out of the tape drives. There's two ways of doing this:
1: Manually.
2: Robotic tape library or autoloader.
No1: Is a pain in the arse and unreliable.
No2: Is very expensive, making it cheaper to use other methods of backup, like cheap disks.
So there *is* a case and a market for cheap tape libraries which you can plug your existing drives into.
Deleted
DAT tapes are used for backups.
Christ do they let just *anyone* in here?
Deleted
Think of anything else that a Mindstorm can help you to change... ah... toilet papers.
This is the coolest geek project I have seen in awhile, now I need to dust off my old dat drive and find some legos cheap. Is there any chance for detail instructions on some of the more intricate parts of the system? I would love to be able to build one on my own. Anyother pictures available or instructions?
Since they always want to do things on a budget, I told him I could build a Lego tape changer for a mere pittance. He wouldn't go for it though.
Something about not being fault tolerant...
Still, I'll bet it's fun to watch! The site needs some .mpgs to illustrate this doohickey in motion...
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
After two years of research, crunching numbers on dozens of computers using parallel processing, I have discovered the reason for this phenomena.
Result: They have too much time on their hands.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I believe the title of the page says "The LEGO Date Tape Loader".
Wasn't there a segment about that in the 1957 classic Amazon Women on the Moon? You know, the one with Andrew Dice Clay.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
i bow before you.
all hail brother_lizardo!
four-oh-four
lego this and lego that...what the hell. why not use real parts instead of stupid plastic bricks. tcp/ip enabled lego bricks, now back up in a lego WHY!!!
Your no good older brother comes by and smashes your changer to bits and pieces, as they tend to do with legos. But that's half the fun with em... build something... DESTROY IT! Maybe it's just me...
today is spelling optional day.
this is cool but a cd changer would be much more useful. Think of it.. put 10 CDs in your lego tower walk away for a while come back and have them all CDex'ed (or whatever) into MP3. With todays fast CD readers and fast CPU the main holdup in encoding my CDs into MP3's is my laziness having to stay around the house and change them.
actually there's quite a bit of research done on engineering applications of LEGO...even on how LEGO can be used in engineering education:
the "LEGO/Logo" project at the MIT Media Lab looks at how children can learn to program LEGO machines using the easy-to-learn Logo programming language (which probably accounts for the first "programming" done by several slashdotters...)
and Fred Martin did his PhD dissertation at MIT on Circuits to Control: Learning Engineering by Designing LEGO Robots , developing MIT's annual 6.270 - "Autonomous LEGO Robot Design Competition" (which happened yesterday!!) in the process.
And amazingly enough, some of the research is not in vain...the LEGO Mindstorms RCX brick was inspired by the "MIT Programmable Brick," developed at the Media Lab.
When I was a kid, I was proud to make something looked kinda sorta like an airplane.
It sure as hell didn't fly or do anything spectacular.
Well, it did come apart if I dropped it.
They're their LEGO.
There are their LEGO.
Their LEGO are there.
Yes but french and spanish are latinish too, but neither of them do plural of 'o' become 'i'... only italian does (maybe latin too, I don't know)
First, like so many others in this thread, let me say that the force is strong in this one.
From what I can figure from the pictures, it does ejection the same way that it does picking -- counting on the little lip on the bottom of the cartridge to stick out far enough that the matching hump on the end of the spatula can grab it.
The problem is that since I have an HP DDS-3 drive, I won't be able to count on that mechanism because unfortunately when it ejects the cartrdige, the bottom slide is still in the open position. Actually pulling the cartridge out is what closes it. So the "lip" isn't there. One would have to give the picker some sort of horizontal tweezers to pinch the cartridge and back it out. That sounds rather difficult, unfortunately.
...if there is one for your half-baked os
no, jpegs do not make a compelling slideshow
He could just rape duck tape around the Lagos to increase strenth. ON a secound thought a duck tape tape loader would be nice.
Geeks love LEGOs.
Sapere Aude - Homer
I sent a quick email off to our Veritas, EMC, and Sun sales reps asking if they had future plans for supporting this device. heheh
I also have heard StorageTEK is going to scrap its Powderhorn silo and replace it with this.
I wonder if you can SAN attach one of these bad boys....now THAT would be cool.
Now I can proudly say "I'm from Denmark!" and to those who might not know about the magic LEGO DAT Tape Loader I can say "We make incredible machines in Denmark!".
Frederik Grøn Schack
So my comment about something being unworthy of mod points is itself worthy of being modded down. Sad to see such a lack of worthwhile posts. Do people even read the mod guidelines?
Actually, it reminds me more of Deus Ex.
Is your company running tools written by ma