Quite a bit of interesting technology there, especially the clock that is only made with neon bulbs, who would have thought that? Certainly not me :-)
I came up with this question as I have an old batch counter that uses discrete transistors for it's BCD counters and decoders. http://xiac.com/Images/KingNixieBatchCounter.jpg I was surprised to see so little transistors there. I actually simulated this circuit in multisim to see how it would actually work. Judging from that, I thought it wouldn't be too complicated to make a clock with tubes, you just need a lot of them. Obviously, I didn't take any of the other aspects into consideration, like power supply and time base etc, it was just a rough idea. Your ZM1030 riddle has probably something to do with the amount of transistors required to go quickly from a BCD counter to a digit on the tube. Michel On Feb 7, 1:28 pm, threeneurons <[email protected]> wrote: > Scroll down to the third group of links, titled "All Tube Nixie > Clocks": > > http://threeneurons.wordpress.com/about/ > > Are you including power supply and timebase in your calculations ? > Actually, the ECC83 (aka 12AX7) is not the best choice for logic. The > ECC82 (12AU7) or ECC81 (12AT7) would be better choices. The 12AX7/ > ECC83 can't pull enough current to really light up a nixie. When they > actually used tubes in computers, the 5963 (a special version of the > 12AU7/ECC82) was used, because it could go a long time in the 'cutoff' > state, without damaging the tube. If you really want to lower you're > tube count, use bi-quinary nixies. The B5025 & ZM1030/ZM1032 are the > only tubes made this way. They all have the same pinout, and us the > miniature 9-pin base, so you can use the same socket type used for the > ECC81. Using a bi-quinary lowers the tube count by about half. If you > use binary counters and then decode, you only need a 1-of-5 and 1-of-3 > decoders, instead of 1-of-10 and 1-of-6 decoders. If you ring > counters, use a 5-stage with a binary flip-flop, instead of a 10- > stage. Likewise for the 6-stage. Here's the datasheet for the ZM1030: > > http://frank.pocnet.net/sheets/045/z/ZM1030.pdf > > As you can see it has only 5 cathodes, but two anodes (odd & even). So > depending on which anode is powered, the display will be either > 0,2,4,6,8 or 1,3,5,7,9. Biquinaries only have an advantage with > discrete circuits. Once you start using ICs, and advantage is lost. If > you don't believe me, 'pencil-whip' a circuit either way. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
