Slashdot Mirror
DataStorm V1.0, a Full-Auto Floppy Disk Cannon
Bob Loblaw writes "I ran across a huge stash of floppies at our office, and after some discussion, it became clear that rather than throw them away, we should build a gun that fires floppies. I had just bought a welder so this was a challenging first project. After about a month of work in my garage at night the DataStorm was born. It was constructed of scrap metal, a kid's bike, a weed-eater motor, and an electric screwdriver. The most difficult task ended up being how to add spin to the disk without significantly reducing its velocity. After a week and a half of trying different options, a stack of zip ties was found to work best. Since we had so much time in it we elected to shoot an infomercial showcasing the device, and had to learn to shoot & edit video as we went. It was basically an office joke that spiraled out of control. My wife is not amused. At all. I hope you like it."
Lock and load those Windows 95 floppies!
...this could form really fun mash-up.
Hmm...at the end of shortened old video, sequence of somebody walking in "Terminator 2 flower box"-style and shooting at the kids/Mac?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Whenever I come across large amounts of anything, my first thought is "I should build a gun to shoot x." This has led me to my pencil gun, paper gun, paperclip gun, staple gun (turns out this already existed), trash gun, concrete gun, and co-worker gun. I'm currently working on a car gun.
In 1997, I had a number of floppy drives sitting around, so I stole the ejector springs from some, and made a floppy drive that would shoot a disk about 10 feet. Incredibly, it didn't harm the drive itself, so I installed this into my home computer. Scared the hell out of my friends the first time they'd retrieve their disk. The only giveaway was that it got difficult to push the disk in.
Good - Floppy warfare and all around destruction.
Bad - Sure, you can buffer those floppies into a pile at 2.88MB/s, but can your drive read the data that fast? Methinks not.
Ugly - Damn those evil girl scouts and their cookies. The spawn of satan they be! FIRE AT WILL!
what to do with the box of floppy disks I found when cleaning the garage this weekend... hmmmmm
:-)
There seems to be no video evidence of it's efficacy against marauding home invading Homeland Security driven police.. but it looks like it might be some sort of deterrent to unwanted guests who are unarmed.... hmmmm
That long forgotten subscription to PC World and all the free disks will come in handy after all
Seriously, does anyone know of a website with plans for a gun like this that shoots tennis balls? My pit bull is waiting tirelessly for a machine to play fetch with. It seems the basic parts are similar here.
Shame they offered no officially sanctioned Hasbro scoring method!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
..He might get evil ideas.
Chairstorm v1.0 - "It'll f***ing kill Google!... LITERALLY."
What's up with Slashdot and the Videos lately? I was hoping to be taken to a page with drawings schematics, etc of a floppy gun. Instead it was a straight to video.
The video was obviously shot directly for Fark, one big fark cliche (the B&W picture of the chick with White Teeth) 'Photoshopped' in.
I like both sites and for different reasons. If I want stupid internet videos I'll get them on Fark.
Don't lose hope. I'm sure you can find a way to amuse your wife with the second revision.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Shooting them out of a 3.5" drive housing is clearly the only elegant way to do this.
Therefore this story earns a +5 Lame.
Subject says it all.
...it became clear that the ultimate weapon would project dead AA batteries a few thousand feet per second. We were never in short supply.
But yeah, now that I work for a school district, it's quite clear that a microfloppy cannon is the way to go. For anti-armor purposes, maybee a zip-disk launcher.
THL phish sticks
If you're going to watch the video, let it load, then skip to about 3 minutes in, then stop watching once you've seen the machine do its thing.
The rest is padding.
|>
Here be Dragons
Just when the guy's vomiting, the ad changes to Windows 2008 server! They should've used Vista instead!!
I love the Netflix Brick. BSG S1E1 - 383 floppies.
Thank pasta storage technology has advanced.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
Sound levels on this video suck.
The closing music level is just fine but the guy at the beginning-- I have no idea what he was trying to say.
I never thought that a video about a weapon that fires floppies would start off talking about abortions.
My roommate has a box of over 500 AOL CDs that I will gladly donate. You may have to rechamber from 3.5" to 120mm, though :)
Your kid won't be amused either.
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
so Bob Loblaw...do you have your own law blog?
6 minutes 46 seconds of my life I'm not getting back.
/.
Maybe next time somebody invents a office product canon, they'll just make a one-part video: the part that doesn't suck.
Seriously, a highlight reel of this thing would have been so much easier to make (and so much more satisfying) than whatever that was. The thing about a "parody" movie is that don't have to have a working model of whatever you're featuring--people just assume it's special FX.
A tech video of how to make it and showing it in use goes pretty far amongst the geekerati here at
ps. Kudos to the girl for her righteous Ash impression, tho.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Great. Myanmar has 1 million dead and dying and you spend your energy designing a floppy launcher.
Why not do the world a favor and design a evil dictator launcher?
Make it a repeater do deal with juntas.
X-Prize anyone?
Bonus points for low earth orbit.
I agree totally. (TOO lazy to make a new user account just to "Twitter" myself a little)
Your video editing is a little off. All of the sound was in the left channel. Otherwise, it was neat. I'd do somethign like that, but I'm somewhat banned from owning any weapons.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Somebody needs more nap time.
I would venture a guess that many here do!
tegescesc ce c es
What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Looks like one of them is possible nominee for Darwin awards. Geek or funny mod points for creating machine that shots floppies and Darwin award for standing in front of that machine.
Well there is 3 minutes and 46 seconds (That's all I could get through) of my life I'll never get back...
Please add the tag for awesomeness.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of floppy disk cannons?
{{.sig}}
I loved the way in which the film went from the anonymous girl scout as victim, to the characterful Raven as a "Don't mess with me" heroine.
:-)
A very well produced, directed, and acted film.
Well done guys and gals!
This could be turned into a great series, with Raven terminating the nonsense in each episode with her shotgun, as a standing joke. Great potential.
I really wanted to see this baby in action! Maybe when I get home. I have a copy of Flight Simulator for Mac on over 25 floppies that are ready to fly!
Invenio via vel creo
I never thought that a video about a weapon that fires floppies would start off talking about abortions.
You missed the best part though, the fact that he was screwing his mom and wanted her to abort.
Funny as hell, and a breath of fresh air in this PC-ridden society.
A week and a half of your company's time for evidently more than one employee, to create something with no value other than to entertain an apparently overpaid and easily amused group of employees. Good grief, I have not worked anywhere within the past 26 years where such a waste of company time would be tolerated. Not even in that stupid government job I once had. God bless you for finding such morons to work for- I'd have wasted no time sending you packing.
Hmmm... You might consider patening it and selling the concept to thinkgeek. Have you any idea just how many offices out there have boxes of floppies in the backoffice that they don't know what to do with?? Other ideas: -Reduce the size to about 1/3, ideally 1/5th, the mass market it. - make a machine that can seperate floppy disks into 3 parts for recycling. (inner disk + outter plastic shell + center metalic ring). Then be able to shoot each part in 3 directions where recycling buckets would be laid. I bet if you managed to get girl scouts to go around offices offering to recycle a company's floppy disks for free, you and the girl guides around the world could possibly win some kind of environmental award. How's that for a twist on a joke? :) Well done btw.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
The number of batteries eaten by a company set of AN/PVS-5's is incredible--I don't think the stupid things will go for more than a couple hours on a set of batteries.
I remember the company HMMMV carrying ammo cans full of AAs during a couple of two-week field exercises in Grafenwoehr. I also remember the company armorer (who I was sort of an "apprentice" to at the time) complaining about humping a couple dozen sets around.
If someone comes up with a realistic replacement for batteries for military equipment (like fuel cells or similar) it would really make a difference.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I think this was a competitor to the Star Wars program. It appears to be a space-based weapon of some sort.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
As a classic computer enthusiast, this gun makes me cry; why not donate the disks to people who use them as part of their restoration efforts?
Anyone found a link to a gun that shoots reel to reel or audio casette tapes?
I want that five minutes of my life back.
As much as I hate the Idle layout, at least it tells me in advance that TFA (well, TFV) is a waste of time. I now have an idea involving my old foam disk guns, however.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
The spawn of satan they be! FIRE AT WILL!
Who is this Will guy and why does everyone hate him so?
Granted, you won't get as many shots as Windows 95. But, you know, Datastorm is registered trademark. Launching Procomm should keep the lawyers at bay.
I'm pretty I still have a unopened box for Procomm Plus for Windows 1.0 if you need it.
More video links and no articles please. My work encourages that we watch videos all day, in fact they want us to start bringing in DVD's and watch them. News for nerds...?
Anyone know who the woman in the pic on his desk is? It's driving me crazy.
Well, a garage is sort of like a cave, and it was built with scraps...
Perhaps this is the real life Tony Stark? (Or at least an amusing knockoff?)