Hi Alex, First things first, I love IN-9 tubes and am in the process of making an audio spectrum analyser with them. I have both the orange and violet versions. My violet ones having the purple top and do illuminate with a very purple glow :o) These tubes are trouble and very hard to make them consistently illuminate from the bottom as they do not have the extra electrode the IN-13s have. But there is a way!
I would be very surprised if your problem is being caused by cathode poisoning, it is more likely to be because of the power supply you are using. These tubes do not like being run off nice clean DC from a SMPS. One must consider that when these tube were first being used (decades before I was alive) SMPS were not used to any extent (if at all?). They were powering the tubes from good old half wave rectified DC. I personally power the tubes from a mains isolation transformer (I think it came out of a bathroom shaver socket) and a single 1N4007 rectifier diode. I don't think I have ever had one misbehave being powered in this way. Give it a go and see if this solves your problems. Don't forget that the IN-9 are very power hungry compared with that of the IN-13. Hope this helps, Tim -- 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]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/3XsIzCg-hLUJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
