If You concider blanking the tubes, that includes PWM for intensity
control, by the cathode drivers then use something that can take the whole
anode voltage. I.e. MPSA42. Period.
>
>
> I also remember having seen some clock built with 40?? CMOS at 15V driving
> nixies directly. The protection diodes to Vdd was used for clamping. That's
> a bad pracice that could possibly damage the devices even if Vdd is safely
> held down by some means to ensure it won't rise.
>
Ronald Dekker has a lot of good things to say about driving Nixies with a
lot of facts: http://www.dos4ever.com/QandA/QandA.html
He also shows how to drive a Nixie from a CMOS
4017: http://www.dos4ever.com/ring/ring.html#HEF
Do check the whole ring counter article he has written (which the
