(no subject)
Jan. 10th, 2019 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI was *going* to make an electronics filter, but I realized that would cause problems for people who might not know me but are interested in what I'm doing. Since I hardly post anything behind security anyway, I'd like to think that if I say anything interesting, people might want to read it or send links to it. Readers (all of you) don't mind scrolling past that stuff, do they?
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I ordered caps for my VTVM, but four days later the order was on hold at Mouser. I emailed to find out why and they said I should call customer accounts. The next day, I called that number and they said that the order had already been released and was being shipped. *shrugs*
I saved a mag-card reader/writer from the dumpster at work. A big, heavy one from the '80s. All through-hole with large socketed chips. There's a vacuum fluorescent display, some big capacitors, and an 18 volt, likely linear, DC power supply. A motor too, which I have no use for but is kind of cool. I like the idea of hacking the VFD into a clock or something.
Speaking of clocks made from obsolete display technology...there was a pretty good deal. I just bought a couple of boards with IN-12B nixie tubes on them from an Ebay seller in Moldova. I'm not going to get them until February, but I have a lot to learn before I can use them anyway. Future construction of a nixie clock will be strong motivation to keep learning. People sell sets of nixie tubes for clocks for upwards of $100, and I paid about $30 for ten of them with shipping.
Have you seen what lit-up nixie tubes look like? They're power-hungry, delicate, and have a shorter working life than modern displays. They're (relatively) complicated to make and complicated to power and complicated to control. But they sure are beautiful.
Mine are different from the vertical ones in this video; they're kind of rectangular and are viewed from the top.
I found a data sheet in Russian for them and a Ukranian doctor I'm friends with at work is going to translate it for me. He's awesome! I suspect there's a translation out there somewhere already, but I kind of wanted to involve him since I knew he'd think they're beautiful too.
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I ordered caps for my VTVM, but four days later the order was on hold at Mouser. I emailed to find out why and they said I should call customer accounts. The next day, I called that number and they said that the order had already been released and was being shipped. *shrugs*
I saved a mag-card reader/writer from the dumpster at work. A big, heavy one from the '80s. All through-hole with large socketed chips. There's a vacuum fluorescent display, some big capacitors, and an 18 volt, likely linear, DC power supply. A motor too, which I have no use for but is kind of cool. I like the idea of hacking the VFD into a clock or something.
Speaking of clocks made from obsolete display technology...there was a pretty good deal. I just bought a couple of boards with IN-12B nixie tubes on them from an Ebay seller in Moldova. I'm not going to get them until February, but I have a lot to learn before I can use them anyway. Future construction of a nixie clock will be strong motivation to keep learning. People sell sets of nixie tubes for clocks for upwards of $100, and I paid about $30 for ten of them with shipping.
Have you seen what lit-up nixie tubes look like? They're power-hungry, delicate, and have a shorter working life than modern displays. They're (relatively) complicated to make and complicated to power and complicated to control. But they sure are beautiful.
Mine are different from the vertical ones in this video; they're kind of rectangular and are viewed from the top.
I found a data sheet in Russian for them and a Ukranian doctor I'm friends with at work is going to translate it for me. He's awesome! I suspect there's a translation out there somewhere already, but I kind of wanted to involve him since I knew he'd think they're beautiful too.
