Guitar Gear Forum

... it's not an amp.

My wife got me a nixie clock kit for my last birthday. I finally finished assembly and built housing for it all. I think it would look cool sitting on a mixing desk :P

I love those things. Really want to get some and build... something... with them.

That is really cool!!! Love it!!!

It's amazing that someone is still making those tubes!

G-SPACE wrote:I love those things. Really want to get some and build... something... with them.

ajaxlepinski wrote:That is really cool!!! Love it!!!

It's amazing that someone is still making those tubes!

I don't think anyone actually does manufacture them anymore. All of the ones I could find were either NOS or cobbled from old gear. They don't have pins on the tubes; just leads like a resistor or cap. They were meant to be soldered in and left. Mine were all used; pulled from old Soviet gear, and shipped from Kiev.

When my wife ordered the kit/board, she didn't realize it was going to be shipping from Lithuania. It didn't quite make it here before my birthday.

I've been doing some research / self-learning about early computers (specifically about the Apollo Guidance Computer, which helped guide spacecraft to & from the Moon back in the '60s), and how they stored information using RAM modules (called "core memory") that consisted of nothing more than wire and small ferrite donuts, as well as how software programming was literally woven into a similar wire/ferrite donut structure (called "rope memory").

Along with stuff like that, I've looked into these nixie tubes and have started dreaming up a couple projects that'd use core & rope memory along with a nixie display. Perhaps it'd be a clock or some kind of calculator. More of a desk dustcatcher, but still fun to make and have function properly.

Speaking of calculators - it's hard to believe that the first desktop calculators used nixie displays...

Oh, wow:

Wikipedia wrote:When not being read or written, the cores maintain the last value they had, even if the power is turned off. Therefore they are a type of non-volatile memory.

Yup... but the biggest problem is destructive read.

Prepare for a cavern-sized rabbit hole.

jgreenwd wrote:

ajaxlepinski wrote:That is really cool!!! Love it!!!

It's amazing that someone is still making those tubes!

I don't think anyone actually does manufacture them anymore. All of the ones I could find were either NOS or cobbled from old gear. They don't have pins on the tubes; just leads like a resistor or cap. They were meant to be soldered in and left. Mine were all used; pulled from old Soviet gear, and shipped from Kiev.

When my wife ordered the kit/board, she didn't realize it was going to be shipping from Lithuania. It didn't quite make it here before my birthday.

Kiev!!! Lithuania!!! I guess we have to thank Gorbachev for Glasnost!!!