Blake sent in some pictures of a cool robot that was built using an old CD-ROM drive. I will have to take a look in the storage room, I may have some old 2X drives still kicking around…

“I contructed a simple robot about a year ago. It’s chasis is made from an old
SCSI CD-ROM drive. It uses the mechanics of the drive to pull itself along a
suspended wire. I built it for a project in my high school physics class.

The objective of the project was to construct a device that would get from one
end of a suspended wire to the other with no physical intervention. Our
teacher gave a name for these devices. He calls them “Whizzers”. Mine does
not really “whiz” but it gets the job done.

My Whizzer started out as a simple SCSI CD-ROM drive. I removed most of the
guts but left the motors and mechanisms. The laser and it’s assembly were
removed and attached to the end of the drive tray. The laser is used to clamp
onto the wire so that the tray can close and pull the whizzer along the wire.

The motors are controlled by relays which are switched by a Basic Stamp II.”