Nixie ring counter?

[George R. Gonzalez]

There's a rumor going around that you can hook up a few resistors,
capacitors, and diodes to a Nixie tube and get it to count. No extra
chips, transistors, SCR's, or other 4-layer thingies.

Now I can't find my old GE Glow Lamp manual which IIRC had something
similar.

Anybody have a link to a schematic for such a thing?


Thanks,


George

 

[John Larkin]

On 24 Nov 2004 10:16:24 -0800, grg@umn.edu (George R. Gonzalez) wrote:

There's a rumor going around that you can hook up a few resistors,
capacitors, and diodes to a Nixie tube and get it to count. No extra
chips, transistors, SCR's, or other 4-layer thingies.

Not a nixie, but a Dekatron.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/electricstuff/dekatron.html


John

 

[Paul]

George R. Gonzalez wrote:

There's a rumor going around that you can hook up a few resistors,
capacitors, and diodes to a Nixie tube and get it to count. No extra
chips, transistors, SCR's, or other 4-layer thingies.

Now I can't find my old GE Glow Lamp manual which IIRC had something
similar.

Anybody have a link to a schematic for such a thing?

I've seen it working, and I might be able to find out the email of the guy
who built it.
Send me an email if you are interested.

Paul

 

[Rich Grise]

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 00:02:28 +0100, Paul wrote:

George R. Gonzalez wrote:
There's a rumor going around that you can hook up a few resistors,
capacitors, and diodes to a Nixie tube and get it to count. No extra
chips, transistors, SCR's, or other 4-layer thingies.

Now I can't find my old GE Glow Lamp manual which IIRC had something
similar.

Anybody have a link to a schematic for such a thing?

I've seen it working, and I might be able to find out the email of the guy
who built it.
Send me an email if you are interested.

I saw one[0] where each cathode has its own limiting resistor, and each is
connected to the next through a cap. It powers up random, depending which
element starts to conduct first, and you can introduce pulses that kind of
pass the charge from element to element - this is the "water pipe model"
of charge flow, of course. ;-) The other thing that would take more
sophisticated circuitry to implement is determining which way it's going
to cycle.

Good Luck!
Rich

[0] Truth be known, I've only seen a proposed schematic - I think the
biggest I ever made a neon ring oscillator was 3 x NE-2.
R.

 

[Mike Harrison]

On 24 Nov 2004 10:16:24 -0800, grg@umn.edu (George R. Gonzalez) wrote:

There's a rumor going around that you can hook up a few resistors,
capacitors, and diodes to a Nixie tube and get it to count. No extra
chips, transistors, SCR's, or other 4-layer thingies.

Now I can't find my old GE Glow Lamp manual which IIRC had something
similar.

There are some counting circuits in the Signalite book - online here :
http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/oldbooks.html

There is also a link to the GE book on this page

 

[George R. Gonzalez]

Mike Harrison <mike@whitewing.co.uk> wrote in message news:<gdbbq0l60afbf5a5ser3c135q99238sh1h@4ax.com>...

There is also a link to the GE book on this page

Thanks, that was it, the GE book on page 67-68 has a ring counter with
just neons! Now to see how fast it will go...

 

[Mike Harrison]

On 26 Nov 2004 05:37:17 -0800, grg@umn.edu (George R. Gonzalez) wrote:

Mike Harrison <mike@whitewing.co.uk> wrote in message news:<gdbbq0l60afbf5a5ser3c135q99238sh1h@4ax.com>...


There is also a link to the GE book on this page

Thanks, that was it, the GE book on page 67-68 has a ring counter with
just neons! Now to see how fast it will go...
Remember though that with a nixie, all the gas is in one bottle so it may not behave the same as

discrete neons.

 

[Mark Zenier]

In article <3dea073a.0411260537.50e8d2de@posting.google.com>,
George R. Gonzalez <grg@umn.edu> wrote:

Mike Harrison <mike@whitewing.co.uk> wrote in message
news:<gdbbq0l60afbf5a5ser3c135q99238sh1h@4ax.com>...


There is also a link to the GE book on this page

Thanks, that was it, the GE book on page 67-68 has a ring counter with
just neons! Now to see how fast it will go...

Hmmm, my copy of the GE Book (2nd Edition) on page 62 says "several
hundred pulses per second".

I remember a project from Electronics Illustrated back in the late 1960's
that was an adding machine that used several decade counters made of
these, with a telephone dial for the pulse generator and a switch to
select which digit got incremented. You had to burn in the lamps and
select those with the same breakover voltage for each decade.

Mark Zenier mzenier@eskimo.com Washington State resident