24 May
2005
24 May
'05
2:31 p.m.
From: "James Fogg" <James at
jdfogg.com>
I seem to recall that neon's behave as diodes. I might be wrong.
Hi
As tunnel diodes maybe but not your general purpose diode.
They used the negative resistance characteristics of the neon
lamps to create a 2 state circuit. The difficulty was that
not only did this region drift with aging but it was also
effected by the occasional radioactive particle.
The negative resistance region is small as well, making
it difficult to make circuits that worked.
For logic functions, diodes in general lack the ability
to invert. This is critical for any computing of reasonable
complexity.
Dwight
The site
that had some scanned pages from a book, about using neon
bulbs as logic elements. I planned to read it later, and then lost
it. Anyone seen that site?
You mean the stuff in this zip file?
http://computer-refuge.org/classiccmp/neon_lamp_logic/lamp.zip