A Nixie tube for a neon

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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby McGee2021 » Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:29 am

Harry Dalek wrote:
McGee2021 wrote:
Harry Dalek wrote:Think Andrew would be wondering about that calculator the Russian ones are part of he's Hobby.


Judging by how many boards it has, two of the devoted to memory, it would had of been a very large and expensive calculator in its day. Im missing about half of it, including the case, the powersupply, and part of the wiring harness. Im supposed to go back today and venture through the cluttered house in a search for the rest of it. I'm also going back to rescue a very early portable generator with a very large motor and dynamo.


I know Andrew collects them he may be interested in whats left ? since he hasn't picked up your post yet do you know the name or number that may be onit or picture might be good to .Think these things are rare these days .
Good luck with your parts hunting !


The only markings on it are some soldered on numbers and a for the anodes and c for the cathodes. the strange thing about it is that the tubes are wired were if, for example, you lit one number 8 up all of the 8s would light up.
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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby Steve Anderson » Tue Oct 27, 2015 4:16 pm

McGee2021 wrote:...the strange thing about it is that the tubes are wired were if, for example, you lit one number 8 up all of the 8s would light up.

The tubes are wired to be multiplexed. All of the 1's will be in parallel, all the 2's and so on.

If you wanted to display the total of a calculation, say 12345678, apply HT to the first tube, ground all the 1's for a few milliseconds. Remove the HT from the first tube, apply to the second and apply a ground to all the 2's for a few milliseconds...and so on through all the digits. When finished with the last tube - repeat.

The persistence of vision makes the display look stable and static, it's much the same with a CRT TV and its line-structure.

Doing this reduces the wiring and logic I/O. 8 nixie anodes requires 8 logic lines, 0-9 digits requires 10 logic lines, a total of 18. Driving each tube individually would require 80 logic lines, ten per nixie.

The same is done with LED 7-segment digits (calculators or clocks) for the same reason.

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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby Steve Anderson » Sun Nov 01, 2015 1:43 pm

Couldn't access the photos, it appears to be a private e-mail account. Post them anyway and I'll re-size them, I hope they're less than 10MB each.

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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby McGee2021 » Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:56 pm

I've done a lot of difficult research on the remaining parts of it and it appears to be a Casio/Commodore programmable AL-1000 calculator.
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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby Harry Dalek » Wed Dec 23, 2015 2:58 pm

McGee2021 wrote:I've done a lot of difficult research on the remaining parts of it and it appears to be a Casio/Commodore programmable AL-1000 calculator.

So its this one ! now thats what i call a calculator .Some one who collects them such as Andrew would want it i would ebay that one for local pick up /
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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby McGee2021 » Wed Dec 23, 2015 4:16 pm

The only bad thing about is that the scroll wheel, power button, and case are missing, and after all of those years exposed to the temps, some of the keys are locked up. The strange thing is, I asked all of the family that had ever been in the house and none of them even had a calculator until well up into the late 90's.
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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby Harry Dalek » Wed Dec 23, 2015 4:59 pm

McGee2021 wrote:The only bad thing about is that the scroll wheel, power button, and case are missing, and after all of those years exposed to the temps, some of the keys are locked up. The strange thing is, I asked all of the family that had ever been in the house and none of them even had a calculator until well up into the late 90's.


Yes mystery calculator for sure ,still its old enough bits missing or not ..... rare enough even for spare parts for another ..interesting i have never seen one with neon display up close ...wonder where the case went sounds like some one wanted to fix it and lost interest ?
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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby McGee2021 » Thu Dec 24, 2015 4:35 pm

I finally ventured to the second floor of the house, and strangely enough, found a 1948 philco radio turned on, with the dial light still on since the house had power. I asked them about it and once again, no one had any recognition of it. They let me have it as long as I could singlehandedly take it down the steep stairs and out the narrow doorway. I took it home, powered it up, replaced a tube, and it had very high quality audio for a radio that had been setting in an semi-abandoned home for 55 years.
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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby Harry Dalek » Thu Dec 24, 2015 11:30 pm

McGee2021 wrote:I finally ventured to the second floor of the house, and strangely enough, found a 1948 philco radio turned on, with the dial light still on since the house had power. I asked them about it and once again, no one had any recognition of it. They let me have it as long as I could singlehandedly take it down the steep stairs and out the narrow doorway. I took it home, powered it up, replaced a tube, and it had very high quality audio for a radio that had been setting in an semi-abandoned home for 55 years.



So that thing could of been powered on for years ,well they made radios to last in those days ...I like your determination free valve gear get it home at all cost !
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Re: A Nixie tube for a neon

Postby McGee2021 » Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:45 am

Well, after much studying various tubes very late at nite for 3 months, i have finally settled on a nixie dot indicator used in large dot matrix displays. The IN-28. The only question is, should i use a modern transistor driver, or a classic tube amplifier designed specially for TV by Hollis Baird? The only reason i would use the tube circuit is because it would be more original, and i have the book, " The Romance of Shortwaves and Television", written by Hollis himself, on ready hand.
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