Hi guys,
Since Friedhelm build his Nixie clock with tube electronics in 2005:
https://www.jogis-roehrenbude.de/Leserbriefe/Bruegmann-Digital-Roehren-Cloc…
I'm more or less trying to build a "tube" Nixie clock with neon lamps
and/or trigger tubes/thyratrons instead of vacuum triodes.
In 2005 I told Friedhelm that this is a nice clock..but build the wrong
way. To tube times one build dividers using monoflops and ring counters
with decatrons and so on..not with vacuum tube Flipflops.
We've calculated the energy costs for this tube clock of approx. 400
Deutschmarks in 2005, don't really want todo this today..especially for
the country with the dumbest and worst energy politics world wide..
green ideology politicans here has blown up the worlds best and safest
nuclear power plants to dust...
...
Since I've got approx 1000 of small chinese neon bulbs in the meantime,
I've tried to build Ring counters out of the neon lamps..it works, but
not that good, since the differnece between the Ignition voltage and the
Extinguishing voltage is to small on this tubes, the counters are
unreliable.
A few years ago some russian trigger tubes TX4b got available, that are
small pencil tubes with only 3,5mA Ia max. Those tubes have a bad
reputation in rossia because they where put in to the vertical
deflection circuit of some soviet made black and white TV sets and it
was a bad design, the tubes where overloaded and don't lasted for very
long. Another type, the MTX-90 was more often suggested and used.
After some years the box with the TX4b fell into my hands and I'm
searches again in the russian Internet for possible uses of the TX4b in
Ring counters..the circuit design depends on the parameters of the tubes
and isn't really that simple. I've searched for examples and finally
found some morse transmitter device with "digital electronics" build out
of the TX4b tubes.. russians wrote that this thing was unreliable :-)
Nevertheless I found what I'm searching for, an schematic and a
description in russian, english and french.
..so I have an working ring counter here next to me on a breadboard. :-)
There is still an MPSA42 used as an pulse former in the clock circuit
that I want to change agains a trigger tube. I need an Ide of an circuit
that gets triggered on approx. 30-40V and outputs an rectangle pulse of
lets say 60V and 10-30µs duration to properly trigger the ring counter,
using possibly only one trigger tube.
I think no one knows that for now..but I'm very grateful for links
to older literature on this topic.
approximately in 2000 I'm parted out old hp tube counters, the displays
where "thermometer Displays using 10 pcs. of neon lamps, one for each
number. The counters used 4 12at7 type "digital" tubes (don't remember
the exact type for now) with biquinary output to the neon lamps.
Later hp counter modules used the very same schematics and the neons and
one hybrid photoresistor module in front of the neons as decoder to
drive nixie tubes. I've tried it already in the past with the neon bulb
ring counters.. a cheap photoresistor in a balc schrink tube that was
put onto the neon lamp can switch a nixie..it works flawlessly.
Tried this on the TX4b .. works too. :-)
..other schematics ad an additional trogger tube for each nixie
cathode..the effort pretty much explodes...
Hope someone can help with some hints or links.
Regards,
Holm
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