Lets see your Nixie Tube equipment

[rsjsouza]

A similar piece of gear of the OP. Casio AS-A:

[VK5RC]

OK its not a true Nixie but a 'Dot LED' comes close - and will warm Cubdriver's heart.
My birthday is coming up soon - my wife let me choose -an 8662A - some serious HP iron - funky display and good phase noise. (and a good room heater as well - 450VA)
 Coming from the USA soon I hope!

[AF6LJ]

Those are nice generators, and a fine example of truly good HP Iron.

[bitseeker]

Yeah, has the nifty lit buttons too.

[Cubdriver]

OK its not a true Nixie but a 'Dot LED' comes close - and will warm Cubdriver's heart.
My birthday is coming up soon - my wife let me choose -an 8662A - some serious HP iron - funky display and good phase noise. (and a good room heater as well - 450VA)
 Coming from the USA soon I hope!

Beauteous!     (Though I shudder to think what shipping on that weighty beast must be    )

(And it sounds like you have a pretty awesome wife, too!)

-Pat

[AF6LJ]

OK its not a true Nixie but a 'Dot LED' comes close - and will warm Cubdriver's heart.
My birthday is coming up soon - my wife let me choose -an 8662A - some serious HP iron - funky display and good phase noise. (and a good room heater as well - 450VA)
 Coming from the USA soon I hope!

Beauteous!     (Though I shudder to think what shipping on that weighty beast must be    )

(And it sounds like you have a pretty awesome wife, too!)

-Pat

You don't want to know.
It's not often you see a solid state signal generator draw almost half a KVA...

[VK5RC]

Thanks, I hope 'she' (like all good battle ships)  arrives well, I can't figure out eBay's shipping $, it wasn't too bad. About USD $120 but can at times be triple that! 
Re my wife, very lucky guy I am.
Rob.

[AF6LJ]

Thanks, I hope 'she' (like all good battle ships)  arrives well, I can't figure out eBay's shipping $, it wasn't too bad. About USD $120 but can at times be triple that! 
Re my wife, very lucky guy I am.
Rob.

Not too bad.

[Cubdriver]

Thanks, I hope 'she' (like all good battle ships)  arrives well, I can't figure out eBay's shipping $, it wasn't too bad. About USD $120 but can at times be triple that! 
Re my wife, very lucky guy I am.
Rob.

Wow, that's a really good rate!  It set me back $75 to ship that Fluke calibrator home from CA in February; I'd imagine that they're similar in size and weight - boxed up the calibrator tipped the scales at 77 lbs and was in a 30 x 20 x 14" carton  (It's loooooooooooooong!).  I'd have expected similarly sized shipment to down under to be at least twice that. 

Assuming she was packed reasonably, she should arrive safely given that HP gear of that era is built like a battleship!  Congrats on your new 'toy'.   

-Pat

[VK5RC]

Pat,  Sue, I was pretty happy with that postal rate,  I don't understand eBay's postal charging system, often for the typical HP box from USA to AUS is around USD$ 230. Can still take 3 weeks. The worst example I had was a spare part HP strap handle - the ones about 60cm long on the sides - it went from USA to Oslo! As it was not able to be delivered in Australia in Oslo (fancy that!) it was returned to USA - the eBay seller chased it down - great guy- then resent it.
Rob

[bitseeker]

Keithley 190 teardown thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/keithley-190-5-12-digit-nixie-tube-multimeter/

[idpromnut]

I will be part of this delightful group soon!  Until then, have a picture of a nice clock (the electronics are a kit, the case was made by me):



Write up (if one cares to read some rambling with pictures): http://clog.unrecoverable.org:8060/2013/01/nixie-clock-case/

[Gyro]

Nice case construction!

All you need to do now is get rid those awful blue LEDs! 

[bitseeker]

Hehe, I'm not a fan of the blue LEDs, either. If anything, I'd change them to amber ones that matched the Nixie glow.

Nice case!

[idpromnut]

I actually liked the contrast in color (and the LEDs were part of the kit) but I might give other colors a try. Thanks for the idea

[mc172]

Why fit any LEDs? 

[Gyro]

It looks as if the "delightful group" wish to differ with you on matters of taste. 

Don't take it personally though, taste is indeed a personal thing.

[bitseeker]

Don't take it personally though, taste is indeed a personal thing.

Absolutely! Build it the way you like.

[james_s]

I personally am not a fan of mixing LEDs with nixie tubes but this certainly falls under the category of personal taste. Overall I'd say it's a nice clean build.

[jnd]

Three years ago I bought this old style Metra MT100 voltmeter, listed as non working for about $15. Today revisited the repair attempt and with some luck it is measuring again! Zero is spot on, the calibration voltage is out of adjustment range, will have to look into that. Also the input is quite unstable and the transistor stabilizing 5V rail is getting way too hot, I should check for any excess power consumption or I'm afraid it will burn up. So all in all, repair in progress 

[bitseeker]

That's coming along nicely, jnd. Keep up the good work.

[Gyro]

Nice 15mV range - always useful! 

[neo]

Today's show and tell is a Fairchild 7050 3.5 digit meter with National NL-848 style Nixies.
It's in pretty good shape for something made back in 1967 according to datecodes inside.
Some minor issues resulting from shitty repair attempts like damaging the pc board, solder pads missing,
but nothing too serious.  It needed minor cleaning in and out.  The unit is still reasonably well calibrated.
When I hooked up my AD688 10V reference, it showed +10.02 volts. Not bad, but it was adjusted to +10.00V
I found a service manual for it which reads Systron Donner Model 7050.  It's exactly the same so it looks like
Fairchild made them for SD.  This is all RTL logic, some Fairchild types as as well as the old ul9XX series. Round can
types for decade counters. 
It's pretty compact for what it does. Everything is on one pc board.
The plus/minus and the 1 indicator are standard NE-2 bulbs shining through a square piece of clear plastic.

Well, that's it for now.

I have a multimeter of that exact model! I was beginning to think no one else did!

[neo]

Today's show and tell is a Fairchild 7050 3.5 digit meter with National NL-848 style Nixies.
It's in pretty good shape for something made back in 1967 according to datecodes inside.
Some minor issues resulting from shitty repair attempts like damaging the pc board, solder pads missing,
but nothing too serious.  It needed minor cleaning in and out.  The unit is still reasonably well calibrated.
When I hooked up my AD688 10V reference, it showed +10.02 volts. Not bad, but it was adjusted to +10.00V
I found a service manual for it which reads Systron Donner Model 7050.  It's exactly the same so it looks like
Fairchild made them for SD.  This is all RTL logic, some Fairchild types as as well as the old ul9XX series. Round can
types for decade counters. 
It's pretty compact for what it does. Everything is on one pc board.
The plus/minus and the 1 indicator are standard NE-2 bulbs shining through a square piece of clear plastic.

Well, that's it for now.

I have a multimeter exactly like that! I was beginning to think no one else did!

A few pix of the Fairchild 7050 circuit board after minor cleaning and isopropyl scrub on other
side of board.
In my opinion, this was an underrated piece of gear.  It is very stable and surprisingly accurate and is way more stable than the Eldorado 1820A.
The service manual shows accuracy claims of .1% from 0.000 to 1000V...  Not too shabby. 
I let it run all night and it still showed +10.00 volts this morning.
It gets a  for looks.   

HEY!! I like the way it looks!

[neo]

Alright... You win this round of awesomeness... Man, that is a beautiful beast!
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"