On Wednesday, September 19, 2018 at 11:03:23 AM UTC-4, neonixie-l wrote: > > Even existing members (there are over 1,000) could chip in - there's some > great stuff around... >
My name is Terry Kennedy (though it probably says that on top) and I describe myself as a "semi-retired Internet Geek". One of my first jobs in the early 70's during [US] High School was working in a TV repair shop, back when those still existed. We made house calls and swapped tubes - anything more complicated came back to the shop. My first exposure to Nixie Tubes was on Radio Row in New York City (pre-World Trade Center), where I bought 2 of the inexpenive board + 2 tubes that were surplus from the Ultronic Systems stock ticker systems. I never did get enough money together to purchase the kit of parts to actually turn them into a clock, though I do remember being able to get them to light up. Fast forward [quite] a few decades and I saw link somewhere to Ray "take the money and run" Weisling, and foolishly pre-paid for 2 sets of GeekKlok + GAM kits, which were never delivered, although there was no shortage of excuses (a pattern repeated to this day on crowd-funding platforms). I put my 7971s away and waited for the day I'd have something to use them in. During that time, my search for information on Ray's status led me to the Yahoo! group, which I believe he co-founded with AF. I found a bunch of like-minded folks and bought a few assembled clocks (the Jeff Thomas Nixichron being one of the first) as well as a large number of assorted kits, ranging from the mundane (6 IN-18) to the bizarre (ITS1A with MTX90 ring counters). I also had the first Qlocktwo (from B&F) in the United States. Most rooms in my house have at least 2 clocks, which led to a variety of solutions to keep them all synchronized. Somewhere along the line, I discovered the MOD-SIX clock from Carl and Michael and finally had a project for my 7971 tubes (and a need for more). I got in pretty early (serial 018) and contributed a number of suggestions for the assembly notes. I also decided that a clock that nice deserved to have more than the usual page or 2 of instructions that accompany the average clock / kit and accepted the challenge of making a commercial-quality manual for it. That manual has now grown to 130 pages in 2 documents and I was promoted my Michael to be the third guy on the project - http://badnixie.com/MOD-SIX_Info_Page.html I also have a pretty large stash of oddball display devices and there will likely be an interesting project announced (with kits available) in the New Year. When I'm not working to keep all of my clocks in sync, I also have a number of retrocomputing interests, as well as taking up an old hobby of mine, exploring old mines with groups of like-minded folks. -- 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/34fa762e-ff9b-4f97-85ee-d7dd2bbb088a%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
