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2012-01-28 Is That Your Edge?
Posted by AnubisTTP

We recently obtained a rather unusual device from Brian Stuckey, operator of the TubeclockDB Nixie clock database; a General Radio IND-1803 Numerik Indicator. Manufactured by a company not known for their display division, the IND-1803 is an edge lit display with a number of rather unique properties. Other new additions to the website include a Burroughs B9012 pixie tube in the Gas Discharge Displays section and an unusual surface mount LED display in the Solid State Displays section. We have also veered a bit away from the world of tubes and electronics to make an entry for a mechanical device; an Eaton two movement time lock, a traditional device from a rather insular class of products. Despite a lack of any electronics, this device is a forest of moving parts and can be found in our Clocks Timers & Counters section.

2012-01-18 Imagine a World Without Fallacious Gibberish
Posted by Accutron

In protest of the impending SOPA legislation, Wikipedia has gone dark for 24 hours, blocking all of their pages with a dramatic funerary splash graphic which implores us to 'Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge'. Numerious Wikipedia contributors are concerned that the act of protest will damage the credibility of their work. Rest assured, Wikipedia contributors, your work has no credibility to damage. Just in case you really need Wikipedia today, there's an easy workaround. Instead of Wikipedia temporarily shunting the entire domain to a dummy server, they simply tacked a script onto their page generating code, which covers up the normal pages with the funerary splash. To get around it, simply install the NoScript browser plugin and disallow Wikipedia.org. As far as SOPA goes, we're going to protest it by continuing to provide the same high quality content you have come to expect...while downloading TNG DVD rips at 1.2MB/s.

2011-12-26 The Undiscovered Country
Posted by AnubisTTP

Few arenas are as contested within the world of vintage electronics as the trade war between dekatrons and magnetic beam switching tubes, the two vacuum counting technologies of the era. Dekatrons indicate their own count, magnetic beam switching tubes are faster but require a separate Nixie for count position display. However, what if there was a magnetic beam switching tube that displayed it's own count, like a dekatron, while maintaining beam-switching tube speeds? The exceedingly rare Ericsson RYG10 is just such a tube, a sleeve-type magnetic beam switching tube that can indicate its own count on a curved phosphor screen. The RYG10 can count at up to 1Mhz, a speed that only the most advanced and elaborate dekatrons can match. Not all of our recent additions are of the sort that light up in ways that they should not. We have also expanded our collection of high frequency tubes with a Varian VA-113 reflex klystron, a Raytheon 2K28 external cavity klystron, an undocumented Sylvania 6068A TR cell, and a hefty Varian VA-162P backward wave oscillator that could possibly be used to commit blunt force trauma in a poorly choreographed CSI episode. Our entry for the Federal Telephone & Radio 5J29 split anode magnetron has also received an update; a picture of the questionably rational decorative lamp from which our example was mercifully salvaged. The lamp from which our specimen was liberated was last seen decorating the interior of a trash barrel at Dayton Hamvention 2010.

2011-12-08 Clocking In with the ITS1A Display
Posted by AnubisTTP

We have added a new project build log to the Articles page, covering the construction of a rather unusual timepiece which makes use of a Melz ITS1A display. These neon filled devices use an array of thyratrons to display seven-segment numbers in green phosphor, and can be hooked directly up to a TTL microcontroller with no intermediate hardware despite the high voltages present in the tube. This is likely the only clock using ITS1A tubes so far made outside the Russian Federation... at least we could not find any other projects on the Internet using one of these tubes. Head on over to the project article page to jump down the rabbit hole; it is a very deep rabbit hole indeed.

2011-11-06 Pixel Pushers
Posted by AnubisTTP

We have made some recent additions to the Electronics Museum, including an unusual Soviet matrix display, the ILV2-5/7M2. This is an obscure bitmapped VFD tube that can display a 5x7 alphanumeric character in three different colors; red, green; or blue. Other new additions include a National NL5971 alphanumeric Nixie tube and the Gazotron MTX-90, a Soviet thyratron designed for indicator use, both of which can be found in the Gas Discharge Displays section, as well as a rare Toyo 6ME5 subminiture tuning eye that can be found in the Variable Indicators section. In unrelated news, our article on the construction of a Tiny Tetris device utilizing a small camcorder viewfinder CRT was recently picked up by the Hackaday electronics blog. If you missed this project when it first appeared several years ago, it can be found in the Articles section.

2011-09-13 On The Edge
Posted by AnubisTTP

Once again, we have added a number of new items to the Electronics Museum: * Incandescent Displays: An unusual NLS edge lit display, which indicates numbers using lighted sheets of glass. * Beam Switching Tubes: Two new uncharacterized devices, the BX-1003 and BX2013 "Beam-X" beam switching tubes. * Filament Displays: Two unusual symbol filament displays, the Wamco KW-104EW and KW-104NS. * Solid State Indicators: The Soviet-made AL102A a red point source LED in a metal can package.

2011-07-23 Ginormous
Posted by AnubisTTP

Thanks to a fortuitous donation from Terry Kennedy, a fellow collector, we are lucky to be able to add an uncommon Russian display tube to the Electronics Museum, a massive ILC1-1/7 seven-segment display. This VFD, which has a digit height of over 80mm, is of such huge proportions that it causes lesser nixies and VFD displays in its midst to hang their heads in shame and question their own self-worth. Improbably huge Russian displays were not the only device to be added to the Electronics Museum in recent weeks. We have also added another not-oft-utilized Russian device, an IN-28 neon single dot indicator, to the Gas Discharge Displays section. In addition we have added several other new items, including an FCCD 143D linear CCD to the Monolithic Integrated Circuits section and a Soviet-made A106 shaped cathode 'dekatron' tube to the Glow Transfer Counting Tubes section.

2011-06-14 An Alien Construct
Posted by AnubisTTP

Imagine if you will, a strange alien world where Burroughs made dekatrons. What might they look like? They might look something like the Burroughs BG08220-K, a glow transfer tube of such bizarre construction that it might as well have fallen from the sky. The BG08220-K is a base-24 counter, it has four guides, and in the land of Burroughs, all glow transfer counting tubes are square. Not all of the new items added this week come from the land of mystery. We have also added entries for several tuning eyes, the DM70 and 6E5, to the Variable Indicators section. Be sure to check out the videos on our Videos page to see these tubes in action.

2011-05-26 The Crapocalypse
Posted by Accutron

Hamvention 2011 lived up to expectations, as we bore witness to at least two signs of the impending Rapture on Saturday. First, we were visited by a large swarm of bees, passing over the flea market to sting more sinful people somewhere south of us. Soon after that, the digestive surplus of 30,000 nerds erupted from the aging and overtaxed Hara Arena septic system, slicing the flea market in half with a river of shit for most of the afternoon. On the upside, the intense humanure aroma kept the lines nice and short at the immediately adjacent food vendors throughout the day. Apparently nobody informed God that Cowgirl Express doesn't accept returns. Biblical events notwithstanding, both our sales and acquisitions were brisk, as we transubstantiated a significant portion of our store inventory into new items for our museum through the divine miracle of capitalism. Some of our more noteworthy finds include a USAF UGC-129 airborne teletype terminal, a USAF encrypted satellite terminal, two large Panaplex-based warehouse clocks, several fistfuls of klystrons and magnetrons, three different Kenotron-style x-ray tubes, a bulk lot of brand new Symbol scan engines, and a Macintosh 128K with a $10 pricetag.

2011-05-10 A Wonderful Magical Animal
Posted by AnubisTTP

It's that time of year again; Dayton Hamvention 2011 is rapidly approaching, and we will once again be occupying flea market booth numbers FE3038, FE3039 and FE3040. We will have our full online inventory available, including kit versions of our full range of Yilane products, as well as a vast sea of bulky electonics objects best left to the imagination. Those unfortunate souls who have never attended Dayton Hamvention can experience equal portions of envy and lust by viewing our Hamvention videos of years past. Despite the pressures of Hanvention preperation, we have managed to add a few new devices to the electronics museum in the past week, including a rather rare dekatron, the Sylvania CT-783, to the Glow Transfer Counting Tubes section. We have also added a similarly uncommon display, the General Electric SSL-140, to the Solid State Displays section.

2011-04-19 An Enigma, Wrapped in a Mystery, Wrapped in a Ceramic Flat-Pack
Posted by AnubisTTP

With the vast amounts of electronic components we handle on a weekly basis, it is rare that we come across a part that we can not identify. It does happen on occasion however, and it is an unusual part indeed that is resistant to the normal avenues of identification. We have collected some of the most unusual of these items into a new article; Mysterious Components. If you can identify any of these strange parts, feel free to contact us with the solutions to some of these mystery devices.

2011-03-24 The Diamond Age
Posted by AnubisTTP

In the time before LEDs, large outdoor video displays were constructed using myriad different implausible technologies. Mitsubishi's 'Diamondvision' FMCRT Mark III is one such device, a tileable cathode ray tube with multiple electron guns, each gun dedicated to lighting a single pixel. We have managed to acquire one of these hard-to-find devices and add it to the Imaging Tubes section. Several other new things have been added to the site, including a metal clad HP LED display in the the Solid State Displays section, as well as an unusual Western Electric controller chip in the Monolithic Integrated Circuits section and a Honeywell H5 power transistor which has been added to the Discrete Semiconductors page. As some of you are probably well aware, we also have an online webstore, which is filled with a constant stream of various awesome things. New items are being added to our inventory every week, which can be viewed on the Recent Additions page. If there is a Panaplex-shaped hole in your life that only a Panaplex display can fill, we have you covered.

2011-02-23 Be Square
Posted by AnubisTTP

As many of our readers are now probably aware, the Soviets produced a dizzying array of bizarre display tubes that are almost never seen outside of Russia. This could be one of the strangest of them all however, an IDL1-derivative tube that incorporates an entire VFD structure just to display a single red pixel. Even more unusual, the IDL1 was apparently never made in a red version, and yet we have a red phosphor tube of this type with attached photographic evidence. Truth is stranger than fiction, and this thing is very, very strange. We have also added a new dekatron, a Z563C compact envelope counter, to the Glow Transfer Counting Tubes page, as well as two new 'Datavue' branded Nixie tubes, the CK1903 and CK8422, to the Gas Discharge Displays section.

2011-02-04 Vapor Deposition
Posted by Accutron

Two large ice storms hit us sequentially, causing every tree in the neighborhood to explode and subsequently crash-land on our power lines. We were under blackout conditions for 44 hours, and although we have a large backup generator here at VTA headquarters, our internet service did not return until line power was re-established. This marks the second major blackout we have endured at this location; the 2008 windstorm knocked us out for 154 hours.

2011-01-31 Clocking In
Posted by AnubisTTP

We have posted a new project in the Articles section, a single digit clock utilizing an RCA DTF104B filament display tube. Filament displays are not as often-used as Nixies in clock projects, but they have one major advantage: they can be directly interfaced to a TTL-level circuit. Barring unusual mutations like the ITS1A, all gas filled tubes require a high voltage switching network before they can be connected to a microcontroller. In other news, we have made several additions to the Electronics Museum, including an RFT VQC10D smart LED display in the Solid State Displays section, as well as an IEE 340-06-A729-1 symbol projection display in the Incandescent Displays section and a BA-16 dekatron adder in the Display and Counting Circuits section.

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