Author Topic: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment  (Read 120324 times)

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Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #275 on: July 15, 2017, 05:13:29 am »
Alright... You win this round of awesomeness... Man, that is a beautiful beast! :-+ ;D :clap:
18 GHz feels like it must been just screamin' back in the era of nixie tubes!
Geez, is that mostly RF stuff, or were there applications I'm not even aware of?

I have a 5340A s well. Mine was made in '73 and it has a metal badge on it that says "Communications satellite corp. Washington DC"

Apparently '73 was a strong year for the breed:



(I'm still waiting on an extender card that was ordered on Sunday to continue troubleshooting mine.  Friggin USPS!   :rant: )

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline neo

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #276 on: July 15, 2017, 05:17:56 am »
Alright... You win this round of awesomeness... Man, that is a beautiful beast! :-+ ;D :clap:
18 GHz feels like it must been just screamin' back in the era of nixie tubes!
Geez, is that mostly RF stuff, or were there applications I'm not even aware of?

I have a 5340A s well. Mine was made in '73 and it has a metal badge on it that says "Communications satellite corp. Washington DC"

Apparently '73 was a strong year for the breed:



(I'm still waiting on an extender card that was ordered on Sunday to continue troubleshooting mine.  Friggin USPS!   :rant: )

-Pat

Check the repair page if you have time, there's a pleasant surprise.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2017, 05:24:26 am by neo »
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Offline neo

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #277 on: July 15, 2017, 06:01:43 am »
My nixie tube equipment below. A work in progress 5340A and a fully working and well adjusted Fairchild 7050. By well adjusted i mean it agrees with my flukes 8000A which agrees with my freshly calibrated lcd multimeter.
Third pic is problem with 5340A, any ideas welcome https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/frequency-counter-won't-count/125/.

Forgive the darkness, this is without flash and it is not really that dark to human eyes.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2018, 03:20:20 am by neo »
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Offline VK5RC

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #278 on: August 09, 2017, 09:50:29 am »
OK its not really a Nixie but of similar heritage, I got this for a case of beer from a radio club colleague who is cleaning out and downsizing. He even had the original manuals!
She is alive, and only weighs about 20kg.  :-+
A new power cord, and quite bit of cleaning ahead.
Whoah! Watch where that landed we might need it later.
 
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Offline bitseeker

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #279 on: August 09, 2017, 07:51:09 pm »
Very cool. Are the two sections significantly different age, hence the major color difference?
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Offline VK5RC

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #280 on: August 10, 2017, 11:19:21 am »
@bitseeker - I don't know if there is an age difference - one of the units its serial number plate has  fallen off - I don't think they used the 1960 + the first two digits for the year of production for these subunits.
It looks better in the photo than is does in reality -  quite a bit of corrosion on the aluminium - I am not sure if I can do a robrenz on the dials (he glass bead blasted then filled the engraved slots with black epoxy !) I have rubbed in a bit of gun oil (I don't own a gun) but it works nicely lightening the aluminium corrosion and makes the digits stand out more.
I was just glad it worked. Cleaning is the main issue now. :-+
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Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #281 on: August 10, 2017, 03:01:58 pm »
Rob -

Any components with date codes easily accessible?  My guess is that the tan faceplate one is more recent production than the grey one, but I'm not sure when the color change took place.  (And for all I know, it could have been a gradual thing and both could be the same age.)  Regardless, I'm glad to see it up and running!

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #282 on: August 10, 2017, 03:13:24 pm »
Very cool. Are the two sections significantly different age, hence the major color difference?
On that analyzer they would be.
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Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #283 on: August 10, 2017, 09:10:40 pm »
I recently got a Fluke 8200A meter to join the 8100A and 8120A already in the stable.  I haven't gotten around to opening any of them yet, but did connect them to the 5440B calibrator this afternoon for a quick wring-out on the DC scale at least.  The 8200 will need some work as it's pretty close at middle voltages (around 100V), but a bit low at very low voltages and it starts going off the rails at higher inputs - about 3V high at 250, increasing to as much as ~20V high at 999V in.

It's a bit grimy, as I haven't yet attempted to clean it at all, but I expect it should polish up nicely.  (The atrocious looking mark on the upper right corner of the front panel appears to be sticker residue, rather than an asset tag that was removed with a cold chisel as the one on my HP 4262A LCR meter apparently was.)  I did find a paper manual for it, so I'm in good shape there.

Meter as received:


Group photo with its siblings @ 100V in:


Additional pics of the three meters being fed various voltages are at:
https://pmanning.smugmug.com/Electronics/Fluke-Misc

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline neo

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #284 on: August 10, 2017, 09:19:43 pm »
I recently got a Fluke 8200A meter to join the 8100A and 8120A already in the stable.  I haven't gotten around to opening any of them yet, but did connect them to the 5440B calibrator this afternoon for a quick wring-out on the DC scale at least.  The 8200 will need some work as it's pretty close at middle voltages (around 100V), but a bit low at very low voltages and it starts going off the rails at higher inputs - about 3V high at 250, increasing to as much as ~20V high at 999V in.

It's a bit grimy, as I haven't yet attempted to clean it at all, but I expect it should polish up nicely.  (The atrocious looking mark on the upper right corner of the front panel appears to be sticker residue, rather than an asset tag that was removed with a cold chisel as the one on my HP 4262A LCR meter apparently was.)  I did find a paper manual for it, so I'm in good shape there.

Meter as received:


Group photo with its siblings @ 100V in:


Additional pics of the three meters being fed various voltages are at:
https://pmanning.smugmug.com/Electronics/Fluke-Misc

-Pat

Now i want one worse!  :-DD

Hopefully i find an 8200A at hamfest in two weeks. If i don't i will probably come home and order it or a 8100.  :-DD
« Last Edit: August 10, 2017, 09:31:50 pm by neo »
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Offline bitseeker

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #285 on: August 10, 2017, 09:29:22 pm »
I am not sure if I can do a robrenz on the dials (he glass bead blasted then filled the engraved slots with black epoxy !)

Yeah, his restorations are awesome -- a completely different league. I'm happy if I can get all the stickers, glue, etc. off while still preserving silk screened lettering, lines, and iconography. Accidentally wiping off silk screening is such a bummer. Older gear with engraved panels is so much better!
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Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #286 on: August 10, 2017, 09:54:30 pm »
I am not sure if I can do a robrenz on the dials (he glass bead blasted then filled the engraved slots with black epoxy !)

Yeah, his restorations are awesome -- a completely different league. I'm happy if I can get all the stickers, glue, etc. off while still preserving silk screened lettering, lines, and iconography. Accidentally wiping off silk screening is such a bummer. Older gear with engraved panels is so much better!

Sounds to me like a good excuse to buy a bead blasting cabinet.   >:D

And yes, engraved is much better than silkscreened.  I'd say the anodized in lettering on some of the older Tek stuff is a close second.

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #287 on: August 10, 2017, 10:48:35 pm »
One of these days, I'd like to try etching an alumin(i)um or brass front panel. I already have plenty of power supplies to choose from and deep, crisp etching doesn't require much voltage.
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Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #288 on: August 10, 2017, 11:11:29 pm »
Must resist the urge to look into etching panels....   ???

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #289 on: August 11, 2017, 12:50:22 am »
Forget I said anything. Hrm, I guess it's too late for that. Well, maybe start a new thread for it. ^-^
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Offline VK5RC

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #290 on: August 11, 2017, 10:22:28 am »
My GAS is bad - I do have a blasting cabinet :palm:  It worked really well cleaning the side panels of my Tek 545
I am a bit worried as the engraving is so fine - even with glass bead I might blast the edge of the lettering / numbers so the recognition is lost.
Whoah! Watch where that landed we might need it later.
 

Offline Johnny10

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #291 on: August 14, 2017, 03:53:51 pm »
Not sure if I posted this BLH unit before in Nixie Tube Equipment before?

But what the hey!
Tektronix TDS7104, DMM4050, HP 3561A, HP 35665, Tek 2465A, HP8903B, DSA602A, Tek 7854, 7834, HP3457A, Tek 575, 576, 577 Curve Tracers, Datron 4000, Datron 4000A, DOS4EVER uTracer, HP5335A, EIP534B 20GHz Frequency Counter, TrueTime Rubidium, Sencore LC102, Tek TG506, TG501, SG503, HP 8568B
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #292 on: August 14, 2017, 06:58:46 pm »
I don't recall seeing one. Thanks, Johnny.
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Offline Vince

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #293 on: October 06, 2017, 09:54:13 pm »
Hi there,

Just came across this page !  I assumed EEVBlog was more about modern electronics but I am glad to see that this forum has grown so huge over the years, that the old stuff now enjoys a sufficient audience to generate many and interesting threads !  :D

Took my time and went through all 12 pages with great interest. These 7 segment nixies are incredible ! OK, it seems they were called "lumitron" or something, if I understood you correctly. Come to think of it they were very common place a few years back. I used to see them all the time at gas stations, the pumps would display fuel quantity and price on these nice displays.

I also loved this Russian piece of gear on the first page IIRC, with its mat black aluminium facia, it looks superb. Makes the nixies really stand out, beautifies them. I love this black + nixie combination, wish the "western" manufacturers used it at  least sometimes back then, rather than the same aluminium theme all the time.

Anyway. after 15/20 years of sleep, my passion for electronics eventually woke up, 12 months ago. I started searching for gear to equip the bench.  A couple a months or so ago while doing my daily search for local/French stuff, I came across a nixie counter ! First nixie piece of gear in 12 months of daily search !!! Was complete and in great nick, full featured, decent spec (20MHz 5 digits), in working order, not dirt cheap but reasonably priced, I just couldn't resist the temptation, bought it !!!  :D

It's a Schlumberger, 1971 vintage IIRC, model FM 2502. The seller was an old engineer who bought it brand new back then, hence he still had the original user manual and schematics for it !  This alone is a treasure... normally on these old French instruments you can never find the schematics, never mind a full manual !

It also features a 5 digit pre-scaler as you can see on the pics.


Seller was super nice, we kept exchanging e-mails. said he was clearing his lab of many of his older instruments to make room for more modern instruments... 69 year old but still very actively working in his lab ! Doing RF stuff mostly, but anyway.  Said he had already sold most of his old stuff but that he still had one nixie instrument left, that I might find interesting.... indeed it was interesting, bought it in a heart beat !!!   Another counter.   So that's 2 nixie counters in one go !  ;D

It's a Metrix DX 446A.   What got me excited was the performance of the thing compared to the other counter : not 5 but 8 digits, wow, and 160MHz !  Without a prescaler ! AC coupled though, but I tested it and it starts working from as low as 120kHz.
Again, fully working and with full original documentation, a gem.

Obviously I have since learned, confirmed on here, about the marvelous HP 53XX series ! Sure want one of those !  The 5340 at least, with it's 20GHz input !  :D   Obviously in frog land I will never find one, so hopefully will find one in Europe somewhere, or on Ebay US if shipping is reasonable. Sometimes it is.

Both the Schlumberger and the Metrix have an interesting and surprising (to me at least !) printer port at the back !!!  Yes, a printer... in something that does not even have a micro in it, how can that be...   glad I have the manual for both of these instruments, I have all the technical detail about it.

Well most of you probably know what it is, I guess, but I didn't so I was quite surprised to see this ! Before the advent of GPIB , manufacturers had found this clever way of outputting the measured value so it can be printed or recorded on some purpose made peripheral.  Basically what they did was run the BCD outputs of the various counters to the back, and add some control signals so that the peripheral knows when to sample/record the BCD outputs.  In the case of a counter, it's easy, you just use the gate trigger signal...

Obviously you need quite a large number of pins, 4 BCD lines for each and every nixie tube, plus one or more control signals, plus ground.

So in the 5 digit Schlumberger this all fits in a DB 25 connector, but in the 8 digit Metrix, they had to use a DB 50 plug ! These are not so common place...
They both use different control signals too. So clearly there was no standard describing this interface back then...

Anyway, the Metrix is compact, has good performance, so I decided to actually use it as my primary counter, rather than having it gathering dust. I will see for a more modern counter later, when the need arises and money permits !

It has a nice internal design, with boards plugging into gold plated connectors, which all look like new and no doubt helped with reliability over the years...

It does need a tiny bit of "restoration" though : as you can see from the pictures, there is a knob which is not original and looks out of place and really uglifies ( "beautifies" does exist, so why not "uglifies" ?! LOL ! ) the front panel ! That red capped black knob toward the left. Brr... I need to find an original knob ! not an easy task though !  :(

I love this Metrix, so I thought I would design a little interface/Adapter that I could stuff on the "printer" port at the back, so I could do some data logging/experiments.  Shouldn't be too complicated, I want to start work on this pretty soon and hopefully have something working by year end.

Obviously I might as well try to make it flexible enough to be used on the Schlumberger too, or any future instrument (not just counters) of this era that I might acquire in the future.  Well, I mean electrical compatibility... mechanically obviously I would still need to make a little adapter since the counters don't use the same size connectors.

Anyway, time to shut up and attach some pics ! First the Schlumberger then the Metrix.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2017, 11:37:28 pm by Vince »
 

Offline Vince

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #294 on: October 06, 2017, 09:59:32 pm »
Next, the Metrix DX446A
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #295 on: October 06, 2017, 10:19:14 pm »
Nice ones, Vince, especially when they include manuals and schematics!
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Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #296 on: October 07, 2017, 01:29:55 am »
Nice, Vince.  And just to clarify, the seven segment neon displays are panaplex.  Numitrons are also seven segment, but they're incandescent.  And yes, I think they were common in gas pumps not too terribly long ago.  Welcome to the merry bunch of nixie nuts here.   ;D

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline Vince

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #297 on: October 07, 2017, 01:50:42 am »
Thanks for the clarification  :)

Yeah I love these old glowing things, so much charm !  :D

Now that I am back into electronics, and also into wood-working, I am planning on making a few little "retro" looking gadgets using these lovely displays.
Looks like the most difficult part will be finding suitable displays, at a suitable price ! :-/

I guess I will have to hunt the for every affordable old shitty piece of gear that's worthless and just salvage the displays from it...

I hear some people are making new nixie tubes but I don't know where to buy them... except for that guy in eastern Europe but at 250 buck a pop  no thanks, plus he only does mega huge nixies, basically to build clocks and what not... but he doesn't do small displays suitable for instruments or home appliances.
I hear a couple people i Russia still make some... but I don't have names or address/website, just rumors that they exist... a bit thin isn't it...

 

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #298 on: October 07, 2017, 01:57:59 am »
There still seem to be plenty of surplus Russian ones available on the 'bay - I'm not certain of the number off the top of my head, but think it's the IN-12.  They're top view, sort of flat sided ovals similar to what HP used in a lot of gear in the 60s.

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline neo

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Re: Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment
« Reply #299 on: October 07, 2017, 02:12:25 am »
Buying an HP 5340, in my experience, is alot like playing russian roulette. Mine is almost perfect but will only display to 3 digits due to some odd glitch.
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