[Work in progress. If you receive this it means I hit Send by accident (or forgot to delete this line)]
Yet another 50-something interested in all kinds of funky old electronics. Over the decades I've: A: Repaired cable TV amplifiers, power supplies and field-strength meters. Much of this stuff was in very bad condition thanks to hurricanes, lightning strikes, etc. I look back on those days as "electronic repair boot camp". B: Installed satellite dishes, the 10 foot/3 meter kind. I injured my back moving sacks of "just add water" concrete. I did several tall-pole installations, aligning the dish while standing on three levels of scaffolding with no safety railings, harness, etc. I was paid peanuts and had to put up with an alcoholic pothead every day. C: Worked in a retail optical lab surfacing (grinding and polishing) and finishing (edging and putting in frames) lenses. I'll never work for a major corporation again; Dr. Stanley Perle may have cared about his customers but not so much his employees. D: Was the jack-of-all-trades for what is now a large, famous software developer during its seminal years. I did everything no one else knew how to do as the company didn't have the money then to pay "real" professionals a decent salary. I created databases, used several different DTP programs (I'm still fluent in all of them), edited fonts, fixed computers, and laid out complex documents in multiple languages that didn't use the Roman alphabet. I wrote several applications in my beloved HyperCard (RIP—thanks, Steve) without which I could never have gotten any of that done. Editing the Arabic fonts to satisfy our translators was particularly fun. I was utterly indispensable and paid peanuts. There was more than one version of the product that would never have shipped on time (if at all) if I hadn't been there to solve technical problems that were beyond the CS major college students that made up the Tech Dept. They missed me when I left. Even offered me more money (shock). As you may have guessed from my signature this was all done on Macintosh computers (or clones, which were available before Jobs took up the reins again and killed HyperCard). *** At this point I'm disabled, the old back injury being one piece of the puzzle. I was drawn into the Nixie et al world about a year ago. Since then I've bought up a number of parts and put a few kits together... Threeneurons (Mike Moorrees): Dekatron Spinner, Nixie Thermometer nixietester.com (Marcin Saj): Useless Nixie Device I'm still waiting for someone to produce a kit for a voltmeter using IN-13s and IN-9s. Not yet another "VU meter" or thermometer, a general purpose device with a HV PS, adjustable input voltage range, and proper slew rate limiting and "pulsing" for reliable operation. I'm ready to pay $$$ for some. If anyone has already done it please tell me! Finally, I have a small collection of vintage Nixie gear including a Systron Donner Time Code Generator/Reader. It works beautifully as an industrial quality, rack-mounted Nixie clock. No need to build another one. 8D Oh, and I have a blog. Try not to laugh too hard at my amateurish attempts on various fronts: https://www.astarcloseup.com/ Terry Bowman, KA4HJH "The Mac Doctor" -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/4BCCB0DA-73BA-4CFE-9115-02FBF80E62FB%40gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
