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."

Great

Lock and load those Windows 95 floppies!

Together with "don't copy that floppy"...

...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?

Re:Together with "don't copy that floppy"...

I can see the preview right now...

As Arnold shoots a bad guy with the gun he says, "Bad Sector"

Re:Together with "don't copy that floppy"...

FORMAT B: if you want to live!

That's funny

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.

Re:That's funny

I'm currently working on a car gun.

Great thing about the internet - almost everything has already been done

Scrapheap Challenge - Car Flinger [channel4.com]

Remember, physics is the winner here...

Drive 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, bad, and ugly

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!

Re:Good, bad, and ugly

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.

Sure it can. Just build a floppy drive raid [8k.com] and you're all set.

I was just wondering

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!

Re:I was just wondering

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.

Homemade: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PcL6-mjRNk [youtube.com]
Retail: http://www.buygodoggo.com/ [buygodoggo.com]

Re:I was just wondering

> Retail: http://www.buygodoggo.com/ [buygodoggo.com] [buygodoggo.com]

Blasphemy! God Oggo is not for sale!

What the hell

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.

Re:What the hell

Like whatever you want, videos directly linked from Slashdot (autoplaying, stupid and loud ones especially, not marked NSFW) are not amusing. Not at all.

There are sites for people who like this stuff. On slashdot, something like this should never get through moderation and firehose.

Re:What the hell

Hey, come on now. No one RTFA anyways, so what difference does it make? They can link to a picture of goatse, and everyone would just be arguing about how great/bad of an idea it is.

Re:What the hell

Like whatever you want, videos directly linked from Slashdot (autoplaying, stupid and loud ones especially, not marked NSFW) are not amusing. Not at all.

There are sites for people who like this stuff. On slashdot, something like this should never get through moderation and firehose.

Why isn't it amusing? If a transcript of this video was created, and pictures demonstrated the device, it would be ok? Why? What if it had links to the demos and just had the "padding" as text? Would that be ok? So why not the entire thing? The article is entirely entertainment, and the video was not only funny but also presented the topic in an entertaining way. This /. article was actually written a lot better than most others. I really hate those stories that copy the first few paragraphs from the source. It shows no creativity and is borderline plagiarism. (One even had a dangling footnote still in the /. summary.)

If you are angry because you got caught at work, well that sucks for you. But don't blame us. I have my browser set up not to autoplay flash unless I specifically allow it. This not only blocks spam, but also prevents this issue. You are already playing around. Why do you have your speakers on? Why do you not check the address first (which is not hidden - the domain is Revver.com aka a well-known video site). Why do you not take precautions when browsing /. at work? Especially for an article clearly marked for entertainment.

You are at work. It is your responsibility to take precautions when you are doing non-work related stuff on your computer. You don't have to be an robot slaving away - I can understand browsing /. on your off time. But you should be smart about it and take precautions like using the mute button or using headphones at very least when at work. Personally, I am not amused by coworkers who keep their speakers on so everyone else can hear Windows startup, beep, alert, and shut down.

Re:What the hell

without requiring undue work
And you use Linux?

Datastorm 2.0

Don't lose hope. I'm sure you can find a way to amuse your wife with the second revision.

when i was in the army...

...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.

Skip to the good bit

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.

Re:Skip to the good bit

I dunno, the little girl hoisting the shotgun over her head and saying "This is my boomstick!" was pretty awesome.

Re:Skip to the good bit

I think we should offer that girl, credited as Raven, a complementary slashdot account.

Amazing Video

I never thought that a video about a weapon that fires floppies would start off talking about abortions.

your wife was not amused?

It was constructed of scrap metal, a kid's bike...

Your kid won't be amused either.

Re:Better uses for your time

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.