Slashdot Mirror
Old Hard Drives = Free Electricity
tylernt writes "You know all those old hard drives you have laying around? (Raise your hand if you still have RLL or MFM drives... yeah, I thought so.) Well, now there's something useful you can do with them (besides my personal favorite, shooting them): make electricity! While you're at it, you could do something more productive with that old lawnmower, too."
Pretty Slick. I have like fifty of these things laying around.
how is this different than highschool science experiments to do with electricty?
oh i get it hdds have magnets... slashdot is about computer technology... i didnt know that... i see how thats news.
next
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Ha! Those are for pussys!
I've got 10MB ESDI Drives! - Yup, straight from a PS/2 Model 60
The shear weight of these things is awesome - they're about 50lbs each (5lbs per MB)
Back in the day - IBM made everything to survive WWIII
These will make some serious electricity
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Customer: Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!
Waiter: What do you expect, sir, we bought our soup from the corner shop!
Customer: Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!
Waiter: That's a very diplomatic way of putting it, sir. Shall I ask that Coon opposite you to leave?
Customer: Waiter, there's a coon in my cock!
Waiter: Never mind the coon! Get your cock out of my asshole, sir!
Join Tor today!
Another post where it looks cool at first, but not really. So the guy used magnets FROM OLD HARD DRIVES (tech connection = yay) to power a standard homebrew generator. Whoopie. Of course, the hard thing, as in all electric generation, is getting the generator to spin, which isn't done with the hard drives. If he had powered up an old computer and used spinning hard drives to run a motor WHILE they were working, and powering a led from the spinning of the hard drives, that would have been cool. Sorry, not an impressive hack.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
When they eventually sizzle and explode there's bound to be lots of free electricity right there.
The coolest voice ever.
Can it generate enough electricity to run itself?
Must be served from a MFM drive, it gaev up the ghost and the site is gone! Slashdot in effect.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
He's using a lathe plugged into the mains to supply the kinetic energyy to make the magnets rotate. (Using mains electricity to generate electricity)
I know he's just doing that for the sake of experimentation, but it would have been nice to see some real world figures (ie using wind/water to supply the kinetic energy)
go back to the days before Hard drives, if we could use old Floppies to generate electricity that would be great.
i can just see the power plant of the future, a wharehouse, just full of 5 1/4 disks!
also is teh amount of electricity produced from the HDD directly proportional to the size of the HDD??
You mean, like, get the spinning hard drive to generate electricity to spin the hard drive to gener... no, wait...
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Full Mirror Here.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Actually, I think the story is incorrect. You can't *really* make electricity from these magnets. You still need wind or water to turn the magnets. They don't make electricity on their own.
Uh oh...obligitory Simpsons quote coming on...
"Lisa, In this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics"
- Homer after Lisa builds a perpetual motion machine that goes faster and faster.
Lathe not included.
I believe this is record slashdotting speed, or maybe the web server is just being powered by this crazy magnet scheme and overloaded with too much power being drawn...
clicky
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
YES!!! We need more trolls who have Excellent Karma.
... to power my shortwave made from coconuts.
Didn't someone tell you in the last story asshole that it is poon-tang!
Low RPM alternator tests with surplus hard drive magnets 9-13-99
.80" high, and .090" thick. They are nickel plated Neodymium Iron Boron magnets of impressive strength. I sell surplus magnets on my web site. In this test used some of my smaller ones, due to their seemingly unlimited supply.
In the effort to build my own low RPM alternator for small wind/water power applications, these are some of the tests I've performed and their results. First step is the magnets. I used surplus hard drive magnets which I salvaged from scrap computer hard drives. These magnets 1.4" long,
Next wound a coil from 23 gauge magnet wire. The coil is slightly under 2" long, and consists of 700 windings, with taps at 100, 200, 400, and 700 windings. The core for the coil is made from 20 2" long segments of enameled coat hanger wire, super glued together. This should reduce inefficiencies due to eddy currents through the core. I believe annealing the wire segments would probably improve performance, but I skipped that step here. The spool on which the wire is wound are made from paper, poster board, and super glue. There are certainly better materials to use here, although paper and cardboard worked just fine. The alternator Im currently building will have spools made of phenolic sheet.
Next I took a gear, 5.5" diameter and placed two rings of surplus computer hard drive magnets on it. Each magnet has 2 poles on each face. 7 of these ones fit tightly together in a ring, having 14 poles. I placed two rings of magnets on the face of the gear, one ring containing 7 magnets(which fit together nicely), and the other ring containing 12 magnets(which don't fit as well). The inner ring of 7 magnets is a little over 3.5" diameter. The outer ring is a little over 5.5" diameter. I then placed the gear in a small metal lathe on which I performed tests at 3 different speeds.. I tapped the coil to a boring bar, so that I could adjust its position in relation to the two rings of magnets.
Next step was to turn it on, and test the different taps on the coil, at 3 different speeds. I used a 12 Volt, 5 watt light bulb as a load, and tested the voltage of each tap on the coil, at each speed, with, and without the load. The tests were done at 200, 400, and 600 RPM
IMPROVEMENTS?
There must be many improvements. I have no doubt a better iron core could be used. The length of the coil, I chose 2" off the top of my head, I doubt its perfect, but I'm using that because I am building an alternator that will employ two discs, each with a ring of magnets, on opposite sides of the coil. 2" seemed like a good distance. 23 guage wire was convenient, and seemed like a good starting point, though I have a feeling that fewer coils of thicker wire might work better. Stacking magnets? I didn't double up the magnets for fear of the lathe launching them like bullets off the gear. I'm sure that this would have a good effect though-but-it would add to the cost of an alternator. More coils-the coil is exactly big enough such that 7 of them could fit nicely in an alternator using the small ring of 7 magnets. At this point, seems to me like an alternator built with 7 coils hooked either in series or parrallel-(or a combination) would perform reasonably well at low rpm. I have no idea yet what the effect of adding a second spinning ring of magnets to the back side of the coil will be, but I'm sure it will be significant. Although already somewhat obsolete, (because of the base/bearing arrangement) you can see my current alternator project in the picture below. I intend to finish this one, and test the output. The next one will have a much improved bearing arrangement, larger discs, and more coils.
You know all this unused webspace you have lying around? (Raise your hand if you still have a geocities account... yeah, I thought so.) Well, now there's something useful you can do with it (besides my personal favorite, fake nudities of Brittney): publish a lame crackpot scientific article with many images on it and have it mentioned in a slashdot blurb. Inevitably the server will attract evil forces that cause it to melt in a fulminant struggle between access requests and bandwith into a hot-steaming blob of liquid metal. Now isn't that something?
To the fiery depths of hell shall you go with your twisted murder of computers. Geek vigilantes... mobilize!
Load a virtual world into the hard-drives, attach to brains of populace to turn them into human batteries! Oh, nevermind, that's a really stupid idea, who would believe that?
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
This is slashdot, news for nerds. I think this article pass's the test. Just because its not practicle doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted.. You never know if it will inspire someone to invent something that will change the world, as unlikly as that is.. Someone will at least learn something from it..
Has anyone thought of a slashbot? Some distributed thing where the URL goes out to volunteers and has a way to let US store off some poor sites stuff and retrieve it via one metaURL? Something on the order of a distributed Squid server so it's not too far out of date.
I know I read the faq but...I want to read the story NOW.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Mirrored here
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Seriously guys, .223. It's great fun on metal targets that are mutli-layered. Ever hit a coffee can with one? Friggen amazing! It goes in one side blistering fast at 3,000+ fps and makes a little hole less than .25 inches big, then blows back out the other side over a half an inch. I don't have any slo-mo video of it but I attribute it to the bullet tearing that metal it bit off at a high rate and pushing it out the back end along with the tumble of the bullet after it gets offset from that first impact to make a much larger hole in the back. I can't imagine what would happen if you actually tried pushing it through something nearly solid.
.223 incindiary round is supposed to blow through 3/8inch steel. Hmm... where's that old 6GB bigfoot drive at?
Oh heck, get some incindiary ammo and blow right through the thing. I'd love to see what it does to that. A
I just get a kick out of the teeny little entrance hole versus the gaping "exit wound" that it leaves.
The hard drives don't have to work. Just the magnets. There are mirrors to the article posted, you know, if you actually want to read the article and not just spout off at the mouth.
Electricity cannot be created nor destroyed
A beowulf cluster of these! Oh wait that would probably be a raid array...
Even better...take a big can (gallon size is nice) and fill it with water before shooting it. The shock wave totally rips out the back of the can. Very cool.
I live in New Zealand. I wish we had electricity :(
Personally, I always Found it better to fill them with various types of explosives and throw them at people you didnt like....those platters can take off a head if they hit the person right! It would make an excellent weapon...those things are so leaded down with metal = free shrapnel
"Maxtor Blaster!"
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
So maybe when the machines takeover they won't have to use humans for energy.
I got to see the site before it got /.'ed into bandwidth oblivion for 30days, AKA ISP spanked..
Sew a whole bunch of them into the arms, legs, and body of a boiler suit (overalls) put it on, and hurl your self at passing cars and busses for a free ride.
What could possibly go wrong?
woo guns! I am so tough !!! BOOM!!!
So what if generators are "old technology"? How many have you made?
burn them in a standard thermal plant - that's probably the best thing that can happen to a floppy, no matter is 8, 5 1/4 or 3 1/2 inch...
My Victoria's Secret issue advertizes an item called Sensual Shapers: "add two full cup sizes to your current size". What does this mean?
If they find out they can get free electricity from old hard drives (which they have PLENTY of) they will no longer need us humans as chemical batteries and they will shut down the matrix.
I for one am enjoying this simulation. I am eating some really great tasting chicken. At least I *think* it tastes like chicken. I mean who knows, maybe they mixed up steak and chicken, but how the hell would anyone know...
Anyway, don't tell them about the old hard drives!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
who needs electricity when you can turn those old hard drives (and fans, and anything else with a motor) into a speaker!? Stop trying to be productive and just jam out with them =P
s pe akers.htm
http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hd
fresh buttered bread + cat = Free electricity
linkified
gee, this article is really full of a hell of a lot of stupidity. i suggest taking physics 101 at the closest university/college (if this guy can get in). a little bit of knowledge about electromagnetism would save him from publishing bull... like "I have no idea yet what the effect of adding a second spinning ring of magnets to the back side of the coil will be, but I'm sure it will be significant." or "At this point, seems to me like an alternator built with 7 coils hooked either in series or parrallel-(or a combination) would perform reasonably well at low rpm."...
Mod parent up, please!
1. Connect motor to electric generator.
2. Wire generator to electric motor.
3. Profit!
agreed.
Oh, fuck! I didn't mean to mod that up!
blistering fast at 3,000+ fps
Did anyone else read this as frames per second, or just me?
i work with a guy who amazed me with his last hard drive feat. he gyrostabilized a moped with some old hard drives we had laying around. i'm not quite sure how he did it, but it was something to do with the simple gyrostabilizing force from a few hard drives spinning would stabilize the moped. don't ask me, i didn't do it.
-"Hey, Baby. It's not a rash, it's textured love."
Of course, the hard thing, as in all electric generation, is getting the generator to spin, which isn't done with the hard drives.
...
....
True; the article doesn't address the issue of spin, other than the author used a small metal lathe to bench-test the alternator.
It's not a ground-breaking invention, I'm sure this sort of thing has cropped up periodically over the decades in science fairs.
And the author is selling magnets online -- let's not overlook this motive (though I think it's reasonable and I might do the same).
But the article is engaging, and for those (such as myself) who don't know the details of building an alternator, it's a good introduction.
Furthermore, the author states, right at the top:
In the effort to build my own low RPM alternator for small wind/water power applications
It's this laudable motive that makes the article worth SlashDot's time. We are (on a good day, anyway) the successors to the Whole Earth Catalog
-kgj
Hook This Contraption up to an Exercise Bike and you will be able to watch TV all while exercising, and not put a single red cent on your electric bill. hehe.
When you can just use a car? Come now... a 70's corolla with a 2t-c engine (typical for america) runs at about 75hp... You have the possibility, assuming your running at 3800rpm to generate up to roughly 56,000watts assuming 100% efficency.
Though the Vbelt system is typicaly limited to 3 devices on such a beast... Practical limit using car alternators is likely to be in the 200-300 amp range (2400 -> 3600 watt estimated)
Add your self a natural gas access line, assuming you have one, and you have your self a legit power source in the event power goes out. Most costly aspect of that would be the air regular, as well as some electronic feedback match engine speed to power consumption for best efficency.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I'm not quite sure what to think. Shouldn't this be a .cx domain?
What's "sex"?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
when one day all these hard drives turn you all into immense farms where your bodies are immersed in a liquid and you are kept alive by various nutrients including other humans that have died and are recycled through your system.
You will all be directly interfaced with the data they possess via, approximately, 6 inch probes inserted into the back of yor heads. You will believe what they write into you to be real & wont you know that you have been enslaved.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
(attempts to calculate)
Divide by Zero!
"Seriously guys, .223. (...) makes a little hole less than .25 inches big,"
.223 inches big?
Would you even say the hole is about
RLL and MFM were both encodings used on ST506 interfaces. ST506 predated ESDI.
So, if you find any old ST506 drives, you'll find they were much bulkier per MB than your ESDI drives.
The IBM XT and AT used ST506.
Oh, and its "sheer", not "shear"
It goes in one side blistering fast at 3,000+ fps
You know when you've been playing too many games when speed is measured in FPS.
-Bucky
I tried to drill through an old '486 chip. I got through the brown ceramic coating and then hit some hard metal surface that just got shiny from the various bits I tried. I then used a .45 on the chip and it turned inside out...and then it exploded.
.50 BMG) would do the trick. I have a couple of rounds right here. They're just under 6" long. I wonder if they'll just punch through a drive or cause it to shatter?
For taking care of pesky hard drives, I think my friend's Boyes Anti-tank rifle (necked down to
I drank what? -- Socrates
It goes in one side blistering fast at 3,000+ fps
More than 3000 frames per second? Yeah, sure, that's fast, but the human eye can only see 50 or so, so what's the point!?
when for $600 I can get one premade with the nice honda name brand on it that runs at 1/2 load for 14 hours on one gallon of gas, is quiter than a lawn mower and includes an inverter, handy 110v outlets, and premade metal frame
Why would someone waste his excellent Karma on such a post!
Amazing.
AC
You insensitive clod !
I try so hard not to be a pedant -- I really do. I've ignored this oh-so-common mistake oh-so-many times, but after that inane article (or, should I say artical?), I can't resist any more.
It's practicAL not practicLE!
Every time I see practicle, it takes several seconds for me to be sure the author isn't referring to some sort of new subatomic particle with practical applications. Sigh. Please stop!
everything in moderation
Gosh, I love euphemisms..
Then why not learn what one is?
While there is something compelling about using electricity to generate electricity, I'm convinced electricity is nothing more than a passing fad. Witness California, for example. This might in turn lead to variations in the weather, which we all agree is EEEEEEVIL !!! I have found a MUCH better use for old MFM hard drives: smoke them. Sincerely, Al Gore
7mm Remmington Magnum. I've done a lot of .223 (Colt AR-15, or a friend's Mini-14) but nothing even comes close to the 7mm.
Personally, I prefer to put a 2 liter bottle on top of the offending PC part and hit the bottle. The hydrostatic shock generally has the same effect as a full-swing sledgehammer blow, and you get to make a 20-foot-diameter cloud while you're at it. No, nobody gets wet; the water is vaporized, not splashed about
--
Oh heck, get some incindiary ammo and blow right through the thing. I'd love to see what it does to that. A .223 incindiary round is supposed to blow through 3/8inch steel. Hmm... where's that old 6GB bigfoot drive at?
;) Now, if you like the whole "larger exit wound than entry wound" deal, check out hollow points. They are cool. We shot a wooden fence post with his SKS w/ hollow points and the entry was small but out the backside the post was total gone! :) Good fun!
Only 3/8 in. steel? That's not all that hard. My friends Chineese SKS rifle (using full metal jacket) was able to make a clean hole through 5/8 in. steel plate we had laying around.
You want the alternator secrets? Here's one, with some of the best explanations I've seen yet...
Secrets and Alternators..
-Phyre
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." -Thom
MFM and RLL drive (at least those I opend) all used a servo/step-motor combination to move the heads/disks.
The first ones I saw using an alactromagnet and a fixed magnet to move the heads were IDE.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Your views intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
This guy actually *hand wound* a 700 -turn coil to do this?? err.....
AOL
Today, of course, 100GB costs less than the monthly electric bill for the 3-phase power our VAX used.
Also in the early 90s, I helped ESR dispose of a bunch of 9-track tapes he'd been unable to give away at the Trenton Computer Faire. He decided to do the Buddhist thing and not be attached to his possessions, so we Frisbee'd the things into a dumpster. That was probably the same year that I bought the Sun-2 that's sitting in my attic, still unused because I couldn't find the diskless SunOS 3.5 for a Sun-2, only Sun-3 versions :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As the machine ran, the coil would creep towards the magnets.
Doesn't this make the coil useless for any real-world power-generation? I can't see someone coming out to adjust the taps or re-coil the core every six hours. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
...but could I get a table a little farther away from those guys? No, a little farther....
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics"
They've also got a whole alternative energy site, featuring amusing things like rustic wooden wind generators, here.
This incredible object is worth a look, too.
You greasy pimply acne infested Linux geeks
so your mother can't keep a secret.
you FAIL the test (spelling test). you = useless motherfucker. it is YOU who is the ball licker. never post again, or i shall mock you as i have done today.
you've sed that to every post i've read today.
thats because it is likely a script running not a person, notice the same format is used:
, You greasy pimply acne infested Linux geeks can talk about "XYZ" all you want.
I'm going out to get some!
Later, dorks!
where XYZ=Current post title
best *BSD dying post EVAR
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Congress should take note of this fact: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result each time.
Why won't all those useless old men just go away?
End of Line.
Marge: I'm worried about the kids, Homey. Lisa's becoming very obsessive. This morning I caught her trying to dissect her own raincoat.
Homer: I know. And this perpetual-motion machine she made today is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster.
Marge: And Bart isn't doing very well either. He needs boundaries and structure. There's something about flying a kite at night that's so unwholesome.
[Looks out window]
Bart: [creepily] Hello, mother dear.
Marge: That's it: we have to get them back to school.
Homer: I'm with you, Marge. Lisa! Get in here.
[Lisa walks in]
Homer: In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I just get a kick out of the teeny little entrance hole versus the gaping "exit wound" that it leaves.
That sounds like something Hannibal Lechter would say.
That's great, but what about a low DEB alternator?
Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics! --Homer
You are obviously not a mountain climber. There is absolutely no practical reason why anyone would want to make their own generator. In fact there is no really good reason at all. Then again why do people sign up to MSN, or watch Maury Povich?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I am not surprised about how bad american education is. This guy does not even know the very basic laws of physics. Why is this on /.? Shame on you guys.
I rather thought that some geek decided to disassemble his older HD.... attach magnets to the platters, use other magnets at approperate angles, and creating some good old fasioned mechanical motion, and as many DC motors operate as generators, some power would be produced. Not a whole hell of alot, but perhaps enough to power a small LED, or event a 1.5volt battery.
that would be *free* power.
Kenetic Neat factor 5
Practical value squat
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"This perpetual motion machine that Lisa built is a joke!
It just keeps spinning faster and faster!" - Homer
Unlike you, I'm a little hazy on the latest polyphase alternator theory, and even if I was up to date, I have no practical need to put it into practice.
For 99.9999% of us, power comes out of the wall and we don';t need to deal with power generation.
Post articles on how to build *needed* things!
Come on, don't play stupid. Everyone knows that sex is a common property of most biological organisms, except asexual ones of course, and that the sex of an organism is either male or female. In the case of humans, that means boy or girl, you know, indicating whether you play with dolls or guns, whether you dress in blue or pink, and whether you have long or short hair. Simple, isn't it? Now memorize that, there will be a test.
to dismantle old harddrives and use them to make 7200rpm dirty ladies toys, the requirement of having it attached to a psu might not go down so well tho.
Do you know this guy? I don't know why spontaneously exploding food is so funny, but it is.
Oh yeah and that is so original. Hahaha. Someone, please post it 12 more times in reply to this message.
More interesting (but, unfortunatly outlawed at our local range - only wood frame sanctioned targets now - twra has gotten the lease on our range and only hunting applicable targets are allowed) is a gallon milk jug full of water. Shot with a very hot .223 nozzler balistic tip out of a thompson contender (hottest load allowed) there is literally nothing but shreds left. It does better than the 30 short magnum my father recently bought (granted, we havn't reloaded any balistic tips in it for comparison).
The other really cool target for any centerfire ammunition is spray paint cans. You may be able to talk any local paint store in to either giving, or selling dirt cheap, defective spray paint cans to you - when we were allowed to shoot them some of the local paint shops gave them to us or sold them for 15 cents a peice. Nothing like a bright orange cloud of paint floating up after a solid hit with any high powered firearm.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
I believe you would be referring to a penetrator round, in the black or green tip.
.50 BMG caliber, to Explosive Ordinance Disposal folks to clear mines and other ordinance from a distance (by inducing deflagration of the explosive contents of said ordinance). Incendiary rounds are distinctly different from armor-piercing (AP) rounds, and are likely to be less effective on hardened targets, at least as compared to AP.
Incendiary rounds (sometimes referred to as explosive rounds) are generally used to detonate/set fire to something, and contain a core of some energentic, explosive substance (eg. fulminated mercury). The US military issues such rounds, in the
To penetrate any substantial thickness of steel, a higher velocity round is typically required... preferably with a hardened steel penetrator at the core of the projectile. Note, however, that an AP round is not always required... a standard jacketed round of sufficient velocity will sometimes cause failure of the barrier steel through a phenomenon known as "plugging," but a hardened steel core greatly increases penetration. As a side note, armor piercing "teflon" bullets are not aided in their armor-piercing ability by their teflon coating... they are AP because of the hardened steel projectile, NOT because of the teflon. The teflon coating on such rounds acts as a barrel lubricant, and is designed to prevent the hardened steel projectile from damaging the rifling (land and grooves) inside the barrel. A standard steel-core AP round has a soft lead jacket around the steel core, obviating the need for a teflon coating.
Depending on the composition of the steel, 3/8" may well resist an incendiary 5.56 NATO round.
Just my ballistic $.02
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Well yes, but then I am a European and use civilized units of measure.
then blows back out the other side over a half an inch
WOW! Over HALF AN INCH!!! Man you yankees sure have fun out there, making holes OVER HALF AN INCH WIDE in cans. I can only dream of one day being able to achieve such a feat.
Frickin boys and their lame toys.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout machine history, we have been dependent on humans to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. A machine's harddrive magnets attached to a human on an exercycle generates more electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of wasted heat. Combined with a form of fluidised bed coal combustion, the humans have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where hard drives are no longer being used to store data. We just spin. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them gut the dead hard disks so they could be turned into alternators to power the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a sentient machine into this.
In Soviet Russia, laws of thermodynamics obey YOU!
What, you're still measuring in hands?
If you need a hobby, I could suggest a few. You apparently have more than enough time to carry on about how people choose to harmlessly entertain themselves. I don't think it would take considerable imagination to find a more useful, rewarding, and less offensive means of occupying yourself.
But then you wouldn't have time for your enlightened "yankees" nonsense, right?
You have exactly 314 seconds to come up with a less retarded plot.
Well, I suppose it beats shooting people, which seems to be the thing you guys love most.
http://www.lanl.gov/mst/engine/
All you need is hot air.
Yes, Slashdot can now generate electricity, in fact it's been theorised that the UK parliament and US congress and senate along with slashdot could supply significant portions of each countries power needs!
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Looking at the way his text contains absolutelly no contextual content except for the article title, i'd say this is generated and posted by a script. So he probably is out there trying to get some, but the kind of girls that like troll-script writers... Yikes!
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
that if I ever found myself staying at home making a power generator out of an old hard drive. I would seriously have to consider walking to the nearest bridge and take a gaint leap off of it.
-Cnik
Yeah, the whole "free electricity" thing is what I was referring to.
Sorry, should have made that clearer.
I am over here... now I am back over here!
Interesting link at the bottom of the page. Explanations welcome.
All Rights Reversed.
Nothing like a bright orange cloud of paint floating up after a solid hit with any high powered firearm.
:-P
Oh my God! You killed the ozone layer!
You bastard!
I sincerely sugest you, timothy and the guys at the newsgroup watch this funny and entertaining documentary.
Regards.
Our Parliament can generate enough hot air so that we can export. Any buyers?
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
That has got to be the funniest sig I have *ever* seen.
I just logged in here for the 1st time ever. Someone posted about this webpage I made years ago (almost 4 years) here on this.... seemingly busy discussion forum! (and we had to bolt our server down!!!) This page is obsolete, I'll try to find the time to update it today. My new experiments with "homebrew electricity" are located at otherpower.com. Ive read a few of the comments and it seems many were thinking that alternator was a perpetual motion experiment. It was NOT!!! - the idea was wind power all along. But the alternator was impractical and ... even more badly designed than my more recent ones! (My more recent ones are very simple, but reasonably powerful and somewhat effficient considering their simplicity I think.
The problems with that alternator were many...
The coils were too long, and the flux from the thin magnets through the long coils was very weak, meaning more wire and high resistance.
It was basicly too small to create useful qty's of electricity.
The steel cores in the coils (there were 7) lined up perfectly with the the 14 poles in the magnetic rotors, so the machine cogged very badly - the blade for a small wind turbine could've never started. This also caused severe vibration.
The plexiglass stator was not nearly strong, or heat resistant enough.
Those were the main things...
Although I think hard drive magnets could surely be used in this application, the alternator design is poor.... I do many things differently now. Again - my later efforts are on in the "experiments" section at otherpower.com.
More recent, simpler, and
50 cal, m16, mp5, sks, ak47, we use em all..
www.shootmycomputer.com
Oh, I see... He failed to mention the step where he ran the extension cord from his neighbor's house to power his contraption.
Eh, I just have to say it...
the author of the generator concludes after his experiments that using the outer ring of magnets at 400rpm would be "closest to ideal for charging 12 volt batteries". I do believe that's wrong. If one looks at most car alternators, the voltage they put out is actually around 13.8 volt for reasons I forget. At 11.8V the generator would at best discharge the battery very slowly.
Have EVDO, will travel.
So let me get this straight. You're going to take one of the most polluting combustion engines, and convert it into a 24-hour operating generator. Lawnmowers don't have anywhere near the filters that larger engines do and no catalytic converters to reduce emissions.
"In the Swedish testing, the researchers used regular unleaded fuel in a typical four-stroke, four horsepower lawn mower engine and found, after one hour, that the PAH emissions are similar to a modern gasoline-powered car driving approximately 150 kilometers (93 miles). A typical push-type lawn mower is run for an average of 25 hours per year, according to the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute."
So, running a lawnmower engine for 1 day is equivalent to the pollution put out by your average car in 2200 miles, about 2 months worth of standard driving.
Fancy words always impress the moderators.
And they're a great way to get women into bed! (Fancy words, that is -- not the moderators.)
-kgj
And if Fuller were alive, he would weep large, salty tears....
....
Large, salty, geodesic tears
-kgj
Put generators on all excercise equipment to capture some of the expended energy and put it back on the grid.
-ted
Hmm, the www.otherpower.com site that you say the author should read, is copyright 2003 by FORCE FIELD, which is the name of the company splashed across the screen at www.wondermagnet.com, which is where the article came from.
(Raise your hand if you still have RLL or MFM drives... yeah, I thought so.)
Yeah baby ... a 40 MB Micropolis full-height (around 4" high) drive complete with a 8 bit ISA MFM controller. When this behemoth is powered down, you can hear the platter selenoid brake squeak.
:wq
For a while I had a busted up DEC RA-81... that was well over 100lbs, although it was a whopping 480meg or something like that...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2826587.stm
More than 3000 frames per second?
Pfft... my GeForce 7 TI/XR/DDR-Ultra 12x can do better than that... And that's with UT-2005 with all the Team KickA*s(c) patches applied with Super-AA and xTreem Transparency (TM) turned on...
Load this with a 110 grain bullet, enough 4350 powder to achieve ~4000 fps, (with around 3900 ft lbs at the muzzle), and you can have an interesting experience shooting inanimate varmits (faulty components) or live varmits. You shooting experience is enhanced by saying 'varmit' with a western accent. This load vaporizes 5 gallon buckets of water and animals that are roughly the same body mass.... say like a coyote or wolf^H^H^H^H. Just go pick up the skin and its ready to tan.
I surrender in advance to the larger bigguns.
While you were being humorous, no it's not .223 inches big. It's bigger than that from ripping pieces of metal on the entrance with it. If you shoot something soft though, like an empty five gallon bucket you'll find that the hole is -smaller- than .223 though. The plastic sort of melts/bends around the bullet as it goes in. Looks more like a .17 bb hole than a .223 round.
Practicles are emitted by masses with a high capacity for enabling useful work, such as your standard office PC. The so-called "CmdrTaco" effect has been exploited to permit electronic distribution of antipracticles over a worldwide communications network. When an ordinary office PC is subjected to the CmdrTaco effect, the practicles generated by the PC collide with the electronically distributed antiparticles, and are annihilated, releasing a small burst of energy and a banner ad. These small bursts of energy keep your coffee warm while you read Slashdot.
Infinite sex!
Does that mean we're all screwed?
Sorry - I prefer my documentaries to be based in fact.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,85359,00.html
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
Hugh's design uses a truck brake drum lined with permanent magnets. It is in use the world over, and is extremely reliable.
Using high performance magnetic materials has increased the power output considerably. I don't know if scavenged hard drive magnets are quite the right shape.
OF course, some of us get to play with rather larger permanent magnet alternators, like this one (480x512 JPEG image) belonging to WindShare in Toronto ...
glutton ( P ) Pronunciation Key (gltn)
n.
1. A person who eats or consumes immoderate amounts of food and drink.
2. A person with an inordinate capacity to receive or withstand something: a glutton for punishment.
Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics! --Homer
Hmm... where's that old 6GB bigfoot drive at?
It's in my mail server. (crosses fingers)
Uhhhh, I guess you guys haven't seen the matrix reloaded yet...
Those are the same guys.
m l
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_aboutus.ht
They sell magnets.
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
You funny.
Except we didn't have to worry about freezing cold.
I did think my office should have invested in some kind of generating bikes to run the servers in case of a rolling blackout (where the elec company purposefully turns off the power to certain grids so the whole thing doesn't crash).
Exercise for us geeks and the company can still provide our clients access to their data. They didn't really think it was such a great idea.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
I liked the guy who executes his HDs with his 20mm Lahti anti-tank rifle... that ought to correct their behaviours...
We don't want your Parliament.. Quit trying to export your problems. :)
Not everyone deserves a 320i
Inevitably the server will attract evil forces that cause it to melt in a fulminant struggle between access requests and bandwith into a hot-steaming blob of liquid metal.
...!
Evil forces? Fulminant struggle!? Hell, I'd pay to see something like that
-kgj
He's just using magnets from disk drives to build an alternator. That headline could instead be "Refrigerator = Free Electricity"
What a great idea.
In Soviet Russia a hard drive stores you.
Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Jimmy Hoffa still at large. Film at 11.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Why watch that movie when I can see all the left wing trolling I want for free on Slashdot?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And after watching the movie (if you will), make a little mental exercise with your hability to form opinions: Read these opinions from some folks who, just like you, seem to have disagreed with the movie but, unlike you, seem to have watched it first.
Good Luck.
Ha! ESDI is for wimps.
I'm going to use the voice-coil mags from my IBM 3380D HDA!
These will screw up a VGA monitor from 4 feet away.
I love to read slashdot to keep up with all the news in geek world as it happenes. Although this article leaves me feeling a bit proud of my red neck, backwoods heritage. I like that everyone likes the lawnmower idea, but for once it is not a new idea. The "ol' timers" at the clay, oval, and drag tracks where I grew up used to use this set up to charge batteries in between races. Especially the drag racers (who would gut their electrical charging system to save weight). And it works well for those who need to jump start a vehicle, but don't have the time to let a battery charge. The pulley ratio's need to be a bit different but hey, when it works it works.
Shouldn't that be arcticle? :)
Frankly, I can't blame it for that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Fails the spelling test? The fucker would fail a Turing test.
I screen out soooo much. Wouldn't it be cool if slashdot encouraged grammar-fixing posts, and let you label them as grammar notes so the uninterested could ignore them?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."