[neonixie-l] Re: Multiplexing Displays

[Nick Sargeant]

Hi, 

It’s not difficult. My fumbling attempts at a Nixie clock some time ago 
used a 4:1 multiplex ratio, using four digits and only one decoder. I used 
the same MPSA42/MPSA92 driver as your example. My multiplex function was 
called at 100Hz, so each digit was refreshing at 25Hz. It doesn’t flicker, 
and (whoa!) it is working 15 years later. 

The only mod I had was when switching between digits, I turned the cathode 
drive off for a period of 20 microseconds, before selecting the correct 
anode and turning on the next digit. This helped prevent ghosting. 



On Wednesday, 1 November 2023 at 10:14:25 UTC Richard Scales wrote:

> Actually - I just looked through an example over at: 
> https://www.hackster.io/doug-domke/multiplexed-nixie-tube-clock-759ff5
>
> ... and it all seems fairly understandable, have I overthought this?
>
>  - Richard
>
>
> On Wednesday, 1 November 2023 at 09:22:03 UTC Richard Scales wrote:
>
>> The time has come when I need to get a handle the dark and mysterious art 
>> of multiplexing.
>> I have an understanding of what needs to happen though am mostly at a 
>> loss of how to implement it.
>> I am broadly assuming that I should be using some kind of interrupt 
>> routine to make the actual display work whilst the rest of the code gets on 
>> with the job of working out what to display and when to display it.
>> Is it even going to be feasible to have some kind of interrupt routine 
>> that decides what digits to light - set all the bits and then sets the 
>> right anode(s) on and then off again giving enough time for the persistence 
>> of vision to produce a non flickering display when using something like a 
>> wemos D1?
>>
>> I am thinking that the interrupt routine needs to increment which 
>> digit(s) is/are being illuminated - set up the right bit pattern for the 
>> cathodes and turn on the relevant anode(s) - wait a little and then turn 
>> them off again. 
>> My worry is that the amount of time that the displays should be left on 
>> might be a little too long for the ISR as my understanding is that these 
>> should be kept as lean as possible.
>>
>> Do I even need multiple interrupts (my covid addled brain is struggling 
>> to type let alone contemplate multiple ISR's!)?
>> Can the rest of my code run in a non time critical manner as it works out 
>> what it wants to display where whilst the interrupt routine merryly 
>> illuminates digits based on values which I store in a buffer somewhere? 
>> ... or does the rest of my code have to work in come kind of 
>> state-machine fashion?
>> I would expect (hope) to handle display brightness via PWM signals to HV 
>> Drivers. 
>> I have no need for cross fade effects either - just basic multiplexing of 
>> say 10 different multi segment displays. I am more than happy to break up 
>> the displays into say 2 (or more) groups in order to makes things a little 
>> easier.
>>
>> Can anyone point me in the right direction - ideally with some code 
>> snippets that I can use as a foundation?
>>
>> Just to confirm, it is only the general implementation  to drive the 
>> displays that eludes me - the rest of the clock code is well defined and 
>> working well in a direct drive capacity.
>>
>> The desire to move to multiplexed operation is born out the the desire to 
>> drive a greater number of displays with a greater number of segments which 
>> could be done via direct drive but I foresee that multiplexing the displays 
>> will simplify the electronics required.
>>
>> So many questions I know. I would be grateful for any pointers, thank you.
>>
>>  - Richard
>>
>>

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[neonixie-l] Re: Testing a 74141

[Nick Sargeant]

I think I'd agree. 

I've used the Russian K155ID1 drivers from eBay which seem to work OK 
(after finding out the first Eagle library I used had the power supply pins 
swapped so VCC was on pin 12 - reminded me to check new library symbols 
every time now) but it's clearly been a long time, since they seem to be 
silly money now. I repaired my HP 5326A with one of those on a small 
daughter board plugged in to where the HP custom chip lived. Not that I use 
it as my daily driver any more, since the fan is too noisy. 
If you lived in UK, I could post you one for grins - assuming I can find 
one in the parts bins. 

On Thursday, 28 September 2023 at 09:17:53 UTC+1 Craig Garnett wrote:

> That didn't work either, I think I've been sold a duff one.
>
> Craig
>
> On Wednesday, 27 September 2023 at 14:30:22 UTC+1 Craig Garnett wrote:
>
>> Thanks Nick, I'll try that.
>> Back in my day I mostly used 4000 CMOS, I didn't do much with TTL.
>>
>> On Wednesday, 27 September 2023 at 11:23:17 UTC+1 Nick Sargeant wrote:
>>
>>> I'd agree with the above. To make sure you are avoiding any 
>>> indeterminate states, pull all of the inputs up to +5v with a resistor of 
>>> about 2k2 to 4k7. Then, for the inputs you want low, jumper those inputs to 
>>> ground. The pull-up resistors will mean you get a good solid '1' without 
>>> the jumper, and a good '0' with a jumper to ground. 
>>>
>>> When designing with TTL,back in the day, we tended to work with negative 
>>> logic as a preference, because of the nature of the inputs being connected 
>>> to the emitters of bipolar transistors. 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, 27 September 2023 at 10:14:46 UTC+1 Craig Garnett wrote:
>>>
>>>> I tried those suggestions and nothing changed, there's around 4ma total 
>>>> through the LEDs now so it shouldn't be in meltdown mode.
>>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 17:45:06 UTC+1 Craig Garnett wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> I'll give those suggestions a go.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 16:05:17 UTC+1 gregebert wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> 74xx TTL devices have a rather high input-low current, on the order 
>>>>>> of 1mA, so you should use a much smaller pulldown resistor, say 100 
>>>>>> ohms, 
>>>>>> or perhaps none at all. Logically, it should not be possible for more 
>>>>>> than 
>>>>>> 1 output to get driven low on the 7441, but that only applies if all 
>>>>>> parameters in the datasheet are met. I suspect that the 100K pulldown 
>>>>>> isn't 
>>>>>> really pulling-down to a logic-zero, and the IC has gone to some 
>>>>>> intermediate logic state which is non-deterministic.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For the LEDs, I would recommend having a 2K series resistor and 
>>>>>> driving from +12 VDC. That works out to around 5mA  of current which is 
>>>>>> enough to make many LEDs visibly glow and  well-below the 7mA max 
>>>>>> current 
>>>>>> rating of the 7441.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 6:30:15 AM UTC-7 Craig Garnett 
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I bought a 74141 on Ebay and I had a bit of trouble with the 
>>>>>>> delivery but it arrived eventually so I'm trying to test it on the 
>>>>>>> breadboard.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've hooked up LEDs from +ve to all the outputs and pulled the 4 
>>>>>>> address lines down to ground with 100k
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> When I power it up 6 of the LEDS are on and raising any of the 
>>>>>>> address lines does nothing.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It doesn't look good does it?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Craig 
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>

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[neonixie-l] Re: Testing a 74141

[Nick Sargeant]

I'd agree with the above. To make sure you are avoiding any indeterminate 
states, pull all of the inputs up to +5v with a resistor of about 2k2 to 
4k7. Then, for the inputs you want low, jumper those inputs to ground. The 
pull-up resistors will mean you get a good solid '1' without the jumper, 
and a good '0' with a jumper to ground. 

When designing with TTL,back in the day, we tended to work with negative 
logic as a preference, because of the nature of the inputs being connected 
to the emitters of bipolar transistors. 



On Wednesday, 27 September 2023 at 10:14:46 UTC+1 Craig Garnett wrote:

> I tried those suggestions and nothing changed, there's around 4ma total 
> through the LEDs now so it shouldn't be in meltdown mode.
>
> On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 17:45:06 UTC+1 Craig Garnett wrote:
>
>> Thanks,
>> I'll give those suggestions a go.
>>
>> On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 16:05:17 UTC+1 gregebert wrote:
>>
>>> 74xx TTL devices have a rather high input-low current, on the order of 
>>> 1mA, so you should use a much smaller pulldown resistor, say 100 ohms, or 
>>> perhaps none at all. Logically, it should not be possible for more than 1 
>>> output to get driven low on the 7441, but that only applies if all 
>>> parameters in the datasheet are met. I suspect that the 100K pulldown isn't 
>>> really pulling-down to a logic-zero, and the IC has gone to some 
>>> intermediate logic state which is non-deterministic.
>>>
>>> For the LEDs, I would recommend having a 2K series resistor and driving 
>>> from +12 VDC. That works out to around 5mA  of current which is enough to 
>>> make many LEDs visibly glow and  well-below the 7mA max current rating of 
>>> the 7441.
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 6:30:15 AM UTC-7 Craig Garnett wrote:
>>>
 I bought a 74141 on Ebay and I had a bit of trouble with the delivery 
 but it arrived eventually so I'm trying to test it on the breadboard.

 I've hooked up LEDs from +ve to all the outputs and pulled the 4 
 address lines down to ground with 100k

 When I power it up 6 of the LEDS are on and raising any of the address 
 lines does nothing.

 It doesn't look good does it?

 Craig 

>>>

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[neonixie-l] Re: Need advice on a new scope...

[Nick Sargeant]

I have an HP54502A which has been my daily driver for years. Unfortunately 
that ceased to function one day, and I had to go and find another scope to 
fix it. (gnarly power supply issue) Now, I happened to have an HP16500A 
around the place, and by luck I found a 1GHz scope card for it, so after 
much shenanigans involving buying a small Dell computer with a floppy 
drive, installing FreeDOS on it so I could use LIFUTIL to write diskettes 
from images, I got the 16500A working. Then I got the HP54502A working - 
the one-shot capability of the 16500A to spot what was going on at power on 
was instrumental in the fixing (after replacing all of the big caps of 
course - YMMV but I'd also vote for just doing a cap job on the power 
supply of your fine machine)

The HP16500A is the superior beast technically as a scope, but it makes too 
much noise to be the replacement daily driver, so I reverted back to the 
HP54502A - which is also more like a 'real' scope in terms of the user 
interface. However, I still have an old analog 20MHz Hameg HM203 which was 
given to me, just because it's silent in operation, for some things a pure 
analog scope works better - and it takes up very little bench room. 

On Friday, 21 April 2023 at 06:39:49 UTC+1 J Forbes wrote:

> that 2236 is so much nicer than my 2215, you really ought to fix it   
> :)
>
>
> On Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 9:04:16 PM UTC-7 gregebert wrote:
>
>> I'm really happy with my HP16500A, and they are reasonably priced if you 
>> shop around. About 10 years ago I got mine with two dual-channel cards 
>> (100Mhz/200msps) and two logic analyzer cards (OK, dont laugh50Mhz / 80 
>> channels) and probes, pods, and manuals, for about 250 USD including 
>> shipping. It seems like a weird scope because it only has 1 knob, and uses 
>> a touchscreen. I remember when it first came out around 1989, and it was 
>> THE scope to have.
>>
>> Digital scopes are a must-have so you can trigger/capture single events. 
>> There are better versions (16500B, 16500C) that have hard drives and allow 
>> you to login via Xwindows.
>>
>> None of my designs run faster than 50Mhz, so the scope/logic analyzer 
>> works fine for me. I bought a second unit as a spare, but found enough good 
>> cards at low cost to have a second 4-channel scope + logic analyzer. 
>>
>> For nixie work, and especially CRT/NIMO work, get a set of 100x probes.
>>
>> That said, your Tek scope probably just has a dried-out electrolytic cap 
>> in the power supply.
>>
>> On Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 8:44:50 PM UTC-7 martin martin wrote:
>>
>>> My Tek 2236 is nearly 30 moons old and no longer stays on for more than 
>>> a few minutes.  I am sure it's fixable, but on the other hand maybe time 
>>> for a new digital!
>>>
>>> What do you guys suggest for general use and of course clock fixing?
>>>
>>>
>>>

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Re: [neonixie-l] OT: CRT timing question

[Nick Sargeant]

Comparing the timings in the picture and going for common denominators, you 
can see that the front porch and back porch are  (4 units of 660 ns) long, 
hsync is (7 units of 660ns) long, video itself is (64 units of 660ns) long. 
So I would offer that there is a 64 character display, where each character 
is made up of ?6 pixels. So, if you use a pixel rate of 110ns, then use 
those numbers for the parameters of dpi timings, and you should get there. 
Front porch, back porch are 24 pixels each, hsync is 42 pixels, active 
pixels is 384, ...

On Monday, 21 February 2022 at 01:58:19 UTC nixiebunny wrote:

> Jens,
> The horizontal line timing is incorrect. This is why the image is 
> diagonal. 
> The numbers that you provided do not specify the horizontal line total 
> time or frequency. 
> The monitor requires 52 microseconds or 19.2 kHz.
> You need to find a way to specify this, perhaps it is the character count 
> or pixel count and the pixel frequency.
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 20, 2022, 6:26 PM jb-electronics  
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Apologies for the off topic question, but I know there are some CRT 
>> experts in our group and I have been banging my head on this one for a 
>> while.
>>
>> I picked up a cute 6" monochrome CRT module which accepts TTL video. This 
>> is the timing chart:
>>
>>
>> My goal is to run this thing using the DPI module of the Raspberry Pi. 
>> But for all of that to work I have to specify certain parameters and pass 
>> them along to the DPI module, and here is what I read off the sheet:
>>
>>- h sync: 4.615 us 
>>- h front porch: 2.637 us 
>>- h back porch: 2.637 us 
>>- v sync: 0.208 ms 
>>- v front porch: 0.209 ms 
>>- v back porch: 2.917 ms 
>>- active lines: 256 
>>
>> I have verified that at least the vertical signal timing is implemented 
>> correctly, my scope is a tad too slow to resolve the horizontal timing. But 
>> there appears only gibberish on the screen, highly distorted text. Here is 
>> how it looks like: http://jb-electronics.de/tmp/screen01.jpg
>>
>> And this is what it should be (composite video output on my Apple IIc 
>> monitor) for the same "scene": http://jb-electronics.de/tmp/screen02.jpg
>>
>> Can somebody tell me if I am on the right track here, or if there is a 
>> fundamental mistake somewhere in the numbers I read off? Your help is very 
>> much appreciated.
>>
>> Best wishes
>> Jens
>>
>> -- 
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>>  
>> 
>> .
>>
>

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[neonixie-l] Re: Does anyone have a use for a VS10H Trochotron ?

[Nick Sargeant]

Thanks for the replies. I seem to have my two customers - bear with me for 
a few days since work seems to have suddenly hotted up. (typical, isn't 
it?)  Jon, if you email me we can share address info? 

On Tuesday, 20 October 2020 at 21:37:36 UTC+1 Dekatron42 wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm interested in the second one. I live in Sweden and I am prepared to 
> pay for shipping to me.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Martin
>
> On Tuesday, 20 October 2020 at 18:36:41 UTC+2 Jon wrote:
>
>> Hi Nick,
>>
>> I'd be interested in one, and happy to pay the postage (I'm in the UK too 
>> - Hertfordshire).
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Jon.
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 4:13:07 PM UTC+1 Richard Scales wrote:
>>
>>> I'm sorry to say that I didn't even know what one of those was until I 
>>> googled it :-(
>>>
>>> On a more positive note - hello near neighbour - I live just west of 
>>> Chichester!
>>>
>>>  - Richard
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, 20 October 2020 16:01:09 UTC+1, Nick Sargeant wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Having not really discovered a use for them - I think I have two in a 
>>>> collection of vintage stuff that came to me from a death in the family of 
>>>> a 
>>>> friend of a nephew. Will ship to anyone interested in refunding the 
>>>> postage 
>>>> - would like to see them go to a good home, as it were. 
>>>>
>>>> I live in Southampton, UK just in case there is a hit on here. 
>>>>
>>>

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[neonixie-l] Does anyone have a use for a VS10H Trochotron ?

[Nick Sargeant]

Having not really discovered a use for them - I think I have two in a 
collection of vintage stuff that came to me from a death in the family of a 
friend of a nephew. Will ship to anyone interested in refunding the postage 
- would like to see them go to a good home, as it were. 

I live in Southampton, UK just in case there is a hit on here. 

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Re: [neonixie-l] New clock project with R|Z568M nixies

[Nick Sargeant]

You seem to have already taken care of the normal recommendations. So, 
first make sure the metal tube is grounded at the base. Second, make sure 
that it doesn't connect to the ground at the far end of the tube near the 
nixies - that way, you will avoid signal currents using the tube itself as 
a return path. Third, switching of the HV for the tubes is at confined at 
the top, so no emissions issues there. There is a slight risk that the 
switching to create the 170v will leak on to the supply rail, but given you 
are carrying that inside the tube, really you've done as much as you need 
to already. I remember when TV sets had tubes, huge voltages and currents 
switching, with little more than a hardboard cover. 

On Monday, 5 October 2020 at 11:00:21 UTC+1 newxito wrote:

> I’m a little bit concerned about generating a lot of EMI in this project. 
> I’ve added an image, so you can see what I’m trying to do. The controller 
> will be hidden in the base of this old lamp. I will need 5 wires going all 
> the way up into a horizontal tube. The nixies will be mounted with the 
> sockets on top of the horizontal tube. 
> The 5 wires are +170V, +5V, ground, SDA and SCL.
>  I’m concerned about the long 170V wire. Will this act as an antenna? 
> The wires will run inside metal tubes. Will this attenuate the EMI?   
> Should I twist all the wires together? Only SDA and SCL? 
> I was considering using a Cat6 cable and use one of the 4 twisted pairs 
> for the 170V, one for 5V, one for ground and one for SDA and SCL but I’m 
> not sure if that is a good idea.
> Probably I should buy some kind of EMI meter and stop asking questions :-)
>
>

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[neonixie-l] Re: old fashioned pcb

[Nick Sargeant]

When I first started making my own PCBs, I used to get SRBP boards from a 
small shop where they sold off-cuts, scored them with a knife and peeled 
off the unwanted copper. If you lifted up a corner with a knife, it worked. 
My boards had copper in big rectangular patterns, with holes wherever the 
drill bit would stop slipping around. When the world started switching over 
to fibreglass boards, they were much more difficult to peel - i ended up 
with more fingers bleeding from cut edges, and I changed to a resist pen 
and ferric chloride. I loved doing curvy traces, just like the PCBs from my 
favourite HP equipment. I realised FeCl etched all metals, not just copper 
when I tried to do my first etchings in an aluminium tray .. the FeCl went 
right through the tray and went on eating into the concrete floor of the 
garage. (a scene that Ridley Scott stole later for Alien). I blame giving 
up Chemistry before O level exams at school - an excuse my father didn't 
accept. 

Brown SRBP boards had a particular odour when you drilled them, or soldered 
them, and I still refer to those moments when the magic smoke escapes as 
'the nasty brown smell'. 

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[neonixie-l] Re: Look what I found... VFD calculator

[Nick Sargeant]

VFDs are used in consumer electronics as well - my Denon home cinema amp is 
a VFD. I'm sure over time OLED will replace them, and of course I only have 
older models in my home that arrived here as (faulty, repair, spares) from 
some auction site or other, so I can't be sure it is current practice on 
modern beasts? 

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[neonixie-l] Re: MCU religious wars (OT?)

[Nick Sargeant]

I, like others wanted access to the Arduino libraries, so I tend to use an 
AVR 328P with a 16MHz crystal, a resistor, two capacitors and a six pin 
header that I can plug a USB-serial adapter in to. That makes it easy to 
program, without wasting hardware on the board itself. I buy a kit of the 
AVR, socket, crystal and two caps from a certain auction site for pennies. 
If I stick the thing on a socket, I can always use a 'real' Arduino as a 
programmer for it. 

I'm not much of a software type myself, but the Arduino IDE is a bit 
primitive even for me, so I have now implemented the Arduino fixes on 
Code:Blocks so I can use that. 

I create pin-in-hole board designs in Eagle (stuck on version 6.6 now, 
thanks to the change of licence), get ten or eleven of those shipped from 
China for less than 20 bucks for 10cm x 10cm, and I have a development 
board with the stuff on it I want (like a MIDI interface, an LCD or 
flourescent interface and a few pushbuttons, rotary encoders and a pot or 
four. Being a good old fashioned pin-in-hole board means I can still *see* 
the components without a travelling microscope or surgical loupes. It's 
fast enough for many uses, especially of the Human Interface Device type 
since we humans are relatively slow. 

But I must admit, one of those RasPi Zero W things looks attractive. They 
do seem to be double the price in the UK to those prices you mention though 
.. 

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Re: [neonixie-l] Why is there no "prefix" special symbol Nixie tube in the ZM102X / Z56X series?

[Nick Sargeant]

http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/data/1970-0038NL-989/NL-989.htm 


Nick Sargeant

niksgar...@gmail.com

On 4 Oct 2017, at 16:28, Christian Bjelle <cbje...@gmail.com> wrote:

ZM1024?


> 4 okt. 2017 kl. 17:26 skrev jb-electronics <webmas...@jb-electronics.de 
> <mailto:webmas...@jb-electronics.de>>:
> 
> Hi folks, I was just wondering, why is there no special symbol Nixie tube 
> displaying "m", "k", and so on? Suppose I want to display a value of 12mA 
> using Valvo's ZM102X series (or the RFT equivalent, Z56X). This is not 
> possible. How come?
> 
> Cheers
> Jens
> 
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Re: [neonixie-l] Constant current source design

[Nick Sargeant]

Oh, I could tell you some stories. When we did some early ships of advanced 
workstations to universities, I had a bunch of complaints from Cambridge 
University that their optical mice were failing randomly. I phoned the lab 
tec to find out what was going on .. these mice used two colours of LED, 
and a reflective pad with a grid of lines on. So, he told me that one in 
particular was random, jerky, and sometimes the mouse pointer wouldn't move 
at all. I asked him for the serial number of the failing mouse (thinking 
was there a bad batch?) .. he said Hang on, just have to shut the blinds so 
I can read the number - sunlight is too strong ... (a long pause) ... oh, 
wait, it's working now. 

And that was a leading academic institution. Speaks to the difference 
between intelligence and common sense, I feel. 

I had another complaint from a customer somewhere in NY state that one of 
my workstations had a CRT screen where the image wobbled. Just the one. .. 
on a hunch I asked him where it was in the room. Next to a wall, he said. 
Can you move it away from the wall? Oh, look, it has stopped wobbling now. 
What's the other side of that wall? A huge transformer serving power to the 
building apparently. *sigh* 

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Re: [neonixie-l] Re: HLK-PM01

[Nick Sargeant]

I tend to use laptop power supplies to interface with my projects - I am 
always picking up power supplies as laptops get replaced at work. They 
usually kick out 19.5v at 4 or 5 amps. I then design in a small switcher to 
bring that down to 5v for the using application, and put that on the board 
with the rest of the electronics. I have been using a small L4960 design 
for *many* years, which gets copied from project to project. That one 
doesn't get down to 3.3v, so I have had to find another one for more recent 
designs. 



On Thursday, 30 June 2016 05:56:47 UTC+1, SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F. wrote:
>
> If you dont want a wall brick, you could mount a power-supply with a cable 
> (like the laptop ones, that have a cable going to the laptop and one to the 
> mains socket) and directly mount that inside the clock case, maybe takes as 
> much space as a self designed Off-Line supply. There are even some around 
> that can supply different voltages. 
>
> I worked with mains AC in my last job (230V up to 1000V), but i would 
> never make a project with mains ac because if i get injured, or my house 
> burns down, no insurance will cover that..
>

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[neonixie-l] Re: Why were dekatrons still manufactured as recently as 1992 ?

[Nick Sargeant]

I was in Lithuania in the early 90s, shortly after the exit of the 
Russians. There were factories there still making ICs and stockpiling them, 
even though the products they were targeted for were history. As I recall, 
they were making DEC VAX clones, and that is what the ICs were aiming for. 
Since I was working for IBM at the time, talking to the Ministry of 
Informatics about their grand plan to take our PowerPC motherboards, it was 
all very strange. 

Mind you, their unemployment level was close to 0%. 

On Tuesday, 15 March 2016 21:47:14 UTC, gregebert wrote:
>
> I bought a few spare A-101's and at least one had a 1992 manufacturing 
> date.
>
> So I'm wondering what could the former Soviet Union have needed with such 
> old technology in the 1990's ? I would have expected that they would have 
> replaced all their dekatron equipment by then, so even spare tubes should 
> not have been needed. Or, am I entirely wrong and they continued to use 
> 1950's era technology for another 30-40 years ?
>
> Or perhaps was there rampant waste & excess that old factories kept 
> churning-out obsolete devices, only to store them in warehouses, just to 
> keep workers employed ?
>
> Too bad the soviets didn't make tons of CD47's
>

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[neonixie-l] Re: Searching for a specific Itron VFD (Vintage)

[Nick Sargeant]

Have you tried searching Noritake rather than Itron? DIgikey has a 
reference to the part number with Noritake as the manufacturer. 

On Monday, 4 January 2016 17:24:08 UTC, Joe Hutch wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> A friend referred me to this group, suggesting that someone here might be 
> able to help me locate a vintage (30+ years) VFD. I don't have a ton of 
> information on it, except that it was made by Itron back in the 80's. I 
> *think* the part number is AH1018B, as I found a datasheet (attached) that 
> I believe to be the correct one. It's a 14 segment (plus decimal point and 
> comma tail). The attached picture shows the exact VFD I am looking for, 
> EXCEPT I need 10 characters, not 16 as the attachment shows. Any help/leads 
> would be appreciated!
>
> Thanks
> Joe
>

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