OK Ive had a very interesting thing happen. I got the new 6909 nas i mention above and all was good.
The bad tube and a spare i have both light up and count just not fast like they should, even tho they worked like a year ago. So some decay is happening.. All fine and good.. So I was using the slightly slower tube in te tens digit. I did a lot of use. Like prob 20-30 hours over 3 days. All worked perfectly. It was running and spinning away and suddenly i noticed that the tens digit was not even lit up.. I investigated. I used my spare 6909 which i had also been using over the previous 3 days as well testing to see which was faster. So it was known good. No luck. So it seemed my counter had developed a issue. I spent a bunch of time with test gear and checked everything around that tube and nothing was wrong. The 520Vdc before the 270k resistor was correct BUT there was no drop on the other side. The tube was not drawing any current. So I was stumped. Both tubes could not be bad.. So i decided to try my new tube in the socket. IT WORKED.. Back to the other 2 tubes, they did not work.. SOMEHOW BOTH THE TUBES HAD DIED AT THE SAME TIME. Even tho one was not even in the unit. There is no way they both could have died at the same time !.. But indeed further testing revealed both were now dead. No glow at all. When the day before both had glow. INSANE how could this be ?!?! Here is my guess and it might explain some things.. Maybe my use of the tubes set off a reaction in the gasses and materials in the tube that resulted in both tubes dying at the same time. I started using them both at the same time 4 days before. Even tho one got WAY more use maybe just the act of using them could have triggered some complex chemical reaction that took so many days to complete. Turning on a tube does ionize the gas. Anything in gas will also be ionized. So maybe after 40 years some chemical of something in the tube had mixed with the gas. When i started using the tube this ionization caused some complex reaction that ultimately corrupted the gas in the tube. It started a reaction that ended with some gas being depleted or some reacted gas that wont work. Maybe it deposited some film on the electrodes. I dont know. As crazy as that sounds.. I just cannot explain what happened any other way. Both tubes dying on the same day even tho one got almost no use and the other got tons of use BUT both got used for the first time in years 4 days before. So this led to a really stupid, but fun event.. I wondered if there was any neon gas left in the tube. Or ANY gas in the tube.. I applied lots of voltage. Nothing. Tried some HV from a CRT TV, nothing. It was like there was not any gas left.. So in a moment of complete stupidity... I decided to pop it into the microwave.. The tube was toast. Why not.. If there is any gas in there the microwave is sure to ionize it.. It WILL light up... Wow.. Dont try that at home folks.. So the microwave kicked on. The tube IMMD glowed like a supernova. Not orange, but mostly white. Then something happened inside the tube, most likely arcing.. Then the most amazing thing happened. It changed color to kinda a purple and then the top of the tube popped off, cracked all around the getter. There was little if any pressure difference so nothing really popped. It kinda just cracked and fell open. Then the most amazing thing occurred. The gas escaped as a cloud and STAYED LIT AND IONIZED. It held together for a few seconds and made this awesome 60hz kinda deep hum. Quite loudly in a menacing way. It was not the microwave, it was the gas humming obviously acting as a speaker being modulated by the microwave under duress with a 60hz hum in the signal. It was all kinda a purple cloud. It was rather unexpected and scary so i shut it off in a scramble. But OH MY what a display. So obviously there was still some gas in the tube. But for some weird reason I could not get it to glow even providing lots of voltage. Of course the microwave could have literally ignited some of the gas. No doubt if there was hydrogen in there when it arced there would been havoc.. But there was something in there. It stayed ionized even outside the tube. It was awesome... Im going to explore the remaining tube that does not work. Im interested to know what you guys think and any tests I might be able to do to test it to isolate whats going on with the decay of these tubes... In the end tho, I suppose i will have to microwave it and this time use a camera to get the gas plasma fusion ignition. It was pretty impressive. The hum from the gas was awesome. I know you can use a gas as a speaker, Plasmatronics did it back in the 1980's... But yea... SOMETHING odd happened inside the tube. Im thinking its some sort of chemical reaction I set in motion by using them.. This could be bad.. It might mean all 6909's will suffer this same fate. So use might be bad.. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/9f521c87-2e68-46cc-ae5e-55c22fbc7e09%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
