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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
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.
...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 never thought that a video about a weapon that fires floppies would start off talking about abortions.
Your kid won't be amused either.
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
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...
It could have been worse; instead of building a toy gun whilst he could have been solving world problems, he could have been complaining about somebody else building a toy gun whilst he could have been solving world problems.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.