NIXIE DVM REPAIR
OK I am motivated, well at the moment anywho.
I decided to resume work on fixing my turd of a Nixie DVM, Rochar type A.1335, for those who remember this thing.
IIRC that will be round 3.
Just powered it up and quick test to see if it's still alive since the last time I worked on it... 2 or 3 months ago ? Can't even remember when that was. A while ago.
Well at power up, nothing on the Nixie, all dead.... then after 4 seconds some light coming out of them, partially lit digits, then eventually it all comes back to life and they are all rocking.
Strange that. Maybe some leaky caps somewhere that makes for this progressive wakening. I don't know.
...snip...
So that will be my first activity on the meter... it's 17h15 I will spend a bit of time this evening on it, and maybe an hour or two every evening after work.
A little bit at a time, hopefully I will eventually make progress and fix the thing.
P.S. you should really avoid using the N***e word, as it just helps google index TE, for the display choob rapists to find & destroy.
Oh come on...I don't thin tub raist need that to figure out where to find tubes...
Plus, them knowing that Rochar TE contains some, is not going to make their tube business any happier. They are so rare they they would go bankrupt long before they find some to gut.
It's a long defunct smal niche low volume local TE manufacturer, they are extremely rare. found my 3 items ni January out of luck. Been 6+ months then, and I still have not found any more for sale...
Even if the guy found one for sale, so what ? He would have to pay for it. Here because every body is so greedy, it would be advertised at 100 or 150 Euros, add shipping. For that price he would get 4 or 5 tubes max, in unknown condition. He would lose lots of money rather than make any. Even if like me he got lucky and found ONE such instrument at "only" 50 Euros... still have to ad shipping, that props it at 60/65 Euros, for 4 or 5 tubes... ridiculous, not viable to make money, especially when you can get NOS ones for 10 Euros a piece.
It's not like these things were growing on trees like american mass produced HP or Tek stuff, made by the million and spread all over the world.
So he would have to have gotten his hands on a Rochar, or Ferisol or whatever small obscure TE, for free, literally... unlikely. And even then, assuming a good friend of his gives him one.... well in this case he doesn't need Google / TEA / me to tell him there are tubes inside... he can see it for himself...
Also, that means one would have to remove any mention of "Nixie" all over the interweb, of course... it's not gonna happen, it's too late...
Also, people who are sick enough to gut old TE to make a biz out of it, are clever enough to do their own research, they don't need TEA / EEVBlog to know where to find tubes...
Also, there is an entire thread here devoted to just "cool" vintage displays of all kinds... it's a much better source of info than TEA on this subject... should we delete this thread ?!
More fundamentally, I totally refuse to self censor because of these people. Self censorship is half way toward dictatorship. I refuse that some scum bag stealing tubes, decides if I am allowed to use such and such words when I speak about my hobby. Only Putin can do that with his "special military operation".
Sorry... I love my Niksy tubes and will always lovely Kneeksee tubes. NIC-c tubes are lovely.
If you leave if off again for a few months, you could connect a voltmeter across the display HT supply, if you find the voltage low & climbing slowly, then it's the capacitor reforming, if this happens too often, then it would probably be a good idea to replace the HT capacitor(s).
Yes you are right, must be as simple as that... I already replaced a failed cap, open circuit, in the power supply section, when I first started working on this thing.
The HV supply is made with a voltage doubler using two diodes and two 16uF / 350V caps. I shall be replacing them soon then....
I guess I ought to replace all electrolytic caps in this instrument... I see 8 for power rail duties, plus a few more here and there, for other duties.
I might as well order at the same time the two special 1050ppm tempco resistors that I will need to refurbish the Vref board underneath the chassis...
... and I still have to order 3 caps to finish up the restoration of my glowing RM17 Tek scope, so I could group these two orders.