If You are not going to shuffle around Your tubes, then de-poisoning will not help prolong tube life as the heavily used numbers still wear out first. If You shuffle them they will have some mechanical stress every time that is done and maybe cause a leak. Having moveable tube mounts and switch their allocations in software when moved is one solution, but will it really be done over time? People are lazy by nature...
The calendar tubes may benefit from de-poisoning as they shift a little bit too infrequent to keep their cathodes fresh. Just step thru the used cathodes at some hour when You are likely to be asleep. There are no need for fancy drivers, just let the cathodes float when not lit. The never used ones are just never used. No need to waste driver outputs on them. This is not a rocket science. In my opinion the best way to prolong tube life is to use lowest recommended current and use PWM to reduce brightness. In the well known Weston book he states that tube life is inverse proportional to I^2.5, that means a lot of wear for just a little bit more current. He also states that the mean current when pulsed (don't remember dutu cycle) just had an impact of I^1.5. He had no definite explanation for that, just empirical data from sputtering experiments. -- 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/f78b0dbd-30fa-4ce9-8f3f-d11b50d11713%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
