Nice Find. Looking at those pics it seems clear to my eye that this has cathode resistors rather than anode, one for each used cathode. These will then likely be in three groups, Telefunken only, Varisign only and common to both. This then yields one anode wire to all (red wire?) And three cathode wires (three blacks). It does look like they have only put tails on used cathodes. Circuit is likely a simple astable / flip flop with a pair of big transistors for switching the cathodes, maybe with a variable amount of capacitance on its base for the fade effect?
I would suggest an apprentice build back then, maybe the mechanics are nice but I would say the electronics are fairly hum-drum. My approach with this would be to remove the resistor strips, add missing cathode wires, make up some ruler like PCBs with serial HV latches on and replace the main veroboard with a PCB with your favourite micro / embedded solution. This can take in / use the original switches and transformer so with the back on it would look the same. You can then keep the bits removed for archive or if there is enough space, mount new bits on top as a mezzanine. Depends on your goals really, but as is it's more of a curio / collector asset only really... It would blow their minds back then to have scrolling dynamically updated text, and would make use of all the segments (assuming those have not been poisoned to oblivion with deposits). For your current segment poisoning, you could parallel another fairly high R resistor across the existing ones for that tube to up the drive. Certainly no multiplexing going on here! Are you certain they are not socketed? Looks odd with the wires disappearing into the material like that. Best of luck! - Alex On Wednesday, 15 November 2023 at 07:34:47 UTC Magnedyne wrote: > [image: IMG_0035.jpeg] > > -- 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 view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/c16b772a-b927-481f-8312-89f7191644e2n%40googlegroups.com.
