> 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.
The BCD boards look to have 8 transistors arranged as four flip-flops. This makes the decoders easy, as the flipflops have Q and not-Q outputs for each stage, so a simple wire-and lashup with some diodes will do the trick. Cute construction with the long narrow board perpendicular to the other board, with the nixie on it. > I actually > simulated this circuit in multisim to see how it would actually work. If you can extract a schematic from that, I'd be curious. > Judging from that, I thought it wouldn't be too complicated to make a > clock with tubes, you just need a lot of them. Almost any dual triode can be made into a flip-flop, so your 8 transistors can fit into 4 bottles. Even a 7-pin 6J6 can work, since flip-flops generally have common cathodes anyway. > 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. Yeah, if you look at Bruegmann's writeup, he points out that he's using even/odd decoding. Even 7441 and 74141 chips do the same thing internally. Biquinary nixies are a natural, and as Mike points out, if you use 9-pin miniature tubes, you can use the same sockets for everything, nixies and all. - John -- 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.
