Something about finding some cool old busted things with their unique vintage style theres just something about it. Found an old peice of test equipment that was smashed up beyond repair. The front panel and these nice old 7 segment displays have survived. Along with a few salvageable parts from the board. But the displays. Thats the find of the week for me.
Just looked it up. A 3015F Numitron display tube. . these things are older than i thought. I guess before LED was cool
Numitron?
Modern stuff.
Dekatrons are way cooler.
Recently salvaged a 70's letter franking machine and there are only 3 parts in there I cannot use.
It did have a very nice NEMA 34 and a lot of the board components were very high quality and worth the time to desolder.
Last year my boss bought a box of electronic "stuff" from Australian government auctions.
He was after a hot box calibrator, which he got, but also with stacks of other stuff, including a pack of CV442 diodes.
Still in their individually packed boxes, they were that old the paper tape around the box had started to decompose.
Tom.. 
TheMemberFormerlyKnownAsAWOL:
Dekatrons are way cooler.
They are. I don't think ive ever seen one in person though.
Testing these numitrons 6 out of 7 test fully functional. 1 completely dead. Glass is chipped on one edge. Probably left the magic gas out of it. 6 working i can't complain with that.
When I was at school (early 70s), we had a high-speed timer / scaler (the sort of thing you'd measure the muzzle velocity of an airgun or count GM tube pulses) that had dekatrons, to read off tenths and {gasp!} hundredths of a second.
Whole seconds were taken care of by an electomechanical counter, like you'd find in an old Stronger exchange.
When operating, it clicked and buzzed in a really satisfying B-movie fashion!
Hi,
From FranLab;
BINA-VIEW displays.
Tom..
[quote author=TomGeorge link=m
Tom..
[/quote]
TomGeorge:
Hi,
From FranLab;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBiayOg4Ttohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYCe9rfSS18
BINA-VIEW displays.
Tom..
Now those are cool. Kinda reminds me like at the DMV or something you come in and pull a ticket and whichever counter is available will display the ticket number. (Of course today its just LED panels)
Back in the early days, when I was in college, we had instruments that used "Magic Eye" displays"
I'm also real fond of dekatrons, and I had (until a year ago) a scintillation counter that used them. I'm also fond of nixie tubes, but everything I make these days uses LEDs.
ChrisTenone:
Back in the early days, when I was in college, we had instruments that used "Magic Eye" displays"I'm also real fond of dekatrons, and I had (until a year ago) a scintillation counter that used them. I'm also fond of nixie tubes, but everything I make these days uses LEDs.
Ah.. Thats what they call those tubes. I actually own a 1960s reel to reel recorder that uses one of those.. (Mono) recorder. Its used as a recording level indicator. If the (ends) cross or touch the input is too high and recording quality is poor. If there is nothing happening it is too low level. Its actually cool. I just didn't know what it was called. . surprisingly the unit actually still functions. Although it should be gone over and checked out. Needs a couple belts and adjustments. And brakes for the reels. When you stop the machine the tape just flys everywhere. You have to physically grab the reel when you hit stop. Or you get a good mess to reel back up.
I own a 1942 WWII ex-communications vehicle. Dodge WC53 Carryall. It amazes me that nearly 80 years later; Not only I can still order parts for this thing, they come packaged in wax paper for use in the field repair shops during WWII. I feel like I'm desecrating museum displays when I open up and use this stuff to do repairs.
78 year old parts. Think about how much stuff we must have built for WWII that there is still stuff around today.
Four wheeling the old girl.
-jim lee
