I uploaded a machine-shop video a couple days ago, and decided to root through some of my old hard drives for some of the other videos I've shot over the years. I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, but I did find what was probably the first decent video I ever made. (Not that the list of videos in total is all that long. 
It's from 2004, and demos an '04 Speed I'd just finished modding.
I shot that using an 8mm tape cassette camcorder. I converted ("digitized") the footage with some even-then-antique doohickey I'd bought at the local Radio Shack. The box proudly stated it was "fully Windows 95 Compatible!"
It heavily compressed the data as it 'captured' it, leading to the really blocky, lo-res look to it. Worse, it also compressed the static images I used for the intro and outro screens, giving those that funky broken-up look as well.
I suppose that's to be expected from something that was probably designed to work with just eight megs of RAM.
The editing software that came with it was easy to use- limited, but easy- but also crashed, like, constantly. Basically if you tried to do more than maybe six edits, it'd crash. Of course, sometimes it'd load just far enough to crash, but occasionally would actually let me complete a project.
Keeping in mind this was pre-YouTube. I had to load these to my own host, and to watch them, you had to download it and run it locally.
As for the marker hardware: It may not seem all that groundbreaking today, but keep in mind this was cutting-edge stuff seventeen(!) years ago. That was an '04 WDP Angel Speed, four of which I modded for a local (well, up in Anchorage) tourney team. They took the modified guns to a tourney in Huntington Beach, where they worked flawlessly.
Angels back then were chop-o-matics. I could go into the reasonings thereof, but suffice to say there were several design issues that made them pretty hard on paint. KM2 made a pretty high-end board as a replacement for the factory unit, and also gave it a breakbeam ACE (anti-chop eye) rather than WDP's failed "piezoelectric" touch sensor.
KM2 made them, and I was one of the various people doing installs. This team contracted me to do these four- only two of which I ever got paid for, by the way- and while I was doing the installs, I invented and developed my DynaBolt for the Angel.
The Dyna cured one major flaw with the early Angels: In order to make their "RotaBreech" system work (their way of making the bolt quickly removable) the bolt face had to be set back 3 or 4 mm further than most markers, AND, with a heavily 'cupped' bolt face, that allowed the ball to roll relatively far back.
In fact, here's that exact gun:
The Dyna went a long way toward curing that, and markedly improved reliability. Between that and the better ACE system, it changed the nature of the marker.
Point in fact, in '06, WDP themselves revised the design to do essentially the same thing- using a cam mechanism, it'd move the bolt forward... about 3-4mm.
As for the laptop at the end, that was a custom chrony setup that KM2 and I were trying to develop. It'd not only chrony each ball and graph the results, but give you a total, peak and average ROF, including graphing things like time-between-shots and whatnot.
It was a LOT of fun to play with.
It was, however, also pretty buggy, and the entire continent between me and the software guy kind of limited the whole development program. That end readout? The true ROF was closer to 21 per second, not 28.
During single shots, the chrony part agreed closely- but rarely exactly- with my big radar chronograph, so that part was at least reasonably accurate.
I'm sure today somebody could do the same thing with some little clip-on Bluetooth thing, that'd display to your smartphone or something- but keep in mind neither Bluetooth nor smartphones had been invented in '04.
Anyway, thought you might like to see a little old-timey paintball history, and maybe at least the back of Doc's neck.
Doc.
It's from 2004, and demos an '04 Speed I'd just finished modding.
I shot that using an 8mm tape cassette camcorder. I converted ("digitized") the footage with some even-then-antique doohickey I'd bought at the local Radio Shack. The box proudly stated it was "fully Windows 95 Compatible!"
It heavily compressed the data as it 'captured' it, leading to the really blocky, lo-res look to it. Worse, it also compressed the static images I used for the intro and outro screens, giving those that funky broken-up look as well.
I suppose that's to be expected from something that was probably designed to work with just eight megs of RAM.
The editing software that came with it was easy to use- limited, but easy- but also crashed, like, constantly. Basically if you tried to do more than maybe six edits, it'd crash. Of course, sometimes it'd load just far enough to crash, but occasionally would actually let me complete a project.
Keeping in mind this was pre-YouTube. I had to load these to my own host, and to watch them, you had to download it and run it locally.
As for the marker hardware: It may not seem all that groundbreaking today, but keep in mind this was cutting-edge stuff seventeen(!) years ago. That was an '04 WDP Angel Speed, four of which I modded for a local (well, up in Anchorage) tourney team. They took the modified guns to a tourney in Huntington Beach, where they worked flawlessly.
Angels back then were chop-o-matics. I could go into the reasonings thereof, but suffice to say there were several design issues that made them pretty hard on paint. KM2 made a pretty high-end board as a replacement for the factory unit, and also gave it a breakbeam ACE (anti-chop eye) rather than WDP's failed "piezoelectric" touch sensor.
KM2 made them, and I was one of the various people doing installs. This team contracted me to do these four- only two of which I ever got paid for, by the way- and while I was doing the installs, I invented and developed my DynaBolt for the Angel.
The Dyna cured one major flaw with the early Angels: In order to make their "RotaBreech" system work (their way of making the bolt quickly removable) the bolt face had to be set back 3 or 4 mm further than most markers, AND, with a heavily 'cupped' bolt face, that allowed the ball to roll relatively far back.
In fact, here's that exact gun:
The Dyna went a long way toward curing that, and markedly improved reliability. Between that and the better ACE system, it changed the nature of the marker.
Point in fact, in '06, WDP themselves revised the design to do essentially the same thing- using a cam mechanism, it'd move the bolt forward... about 3-4mm.
As for the laptop at the end, that was a custom chrony setup that KM2 and I were trying to develop. It'd not only chrony each ball and graph the results, but give you a total, peak and average ROF, including graphing things like time-between-shots and whatnot.
It was a LOT of fun to play with.
It was, however, also pretty buggy, and the entire continent between me and the software guy kind of limited the whole development program. That end readout? The true ROF was closer to 21 per second, not 28.
During single shots, the chrony part agreed closely- but rarely exactly- with my big radar chronograph, so that part was at least reasonably accurate.
I'm sure today somebody could do the same thing with some little clip-on Bluetooth thing, that'd display to your smartphone or something- but keep in mind neither Bluetooth nor smartphones had been invented in '04.
Anyway, thought you might like to see a little old-timey paintball history, and maybe at least the back of Doc's neck.
Doc.
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