kinda sorta maybe OT: Nixie tube display wristwatch

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that woodelf may have mentioned these words:
>Scott Stevens wrote:
>>It's cool and all, but the article says the Nixie tubes were stripped
>>from an H-P DVM.  I'm an old test-gear collector, and I'd hate for this
>>kind of thing to kick off a frenzy of people making 'novelty' items by
>>destroying old test equipment.
>Well in most cases the test equipment is broken or very outdated.

Dude... uh... the stuff *we* collect _is_ 'outdated' -- If that's not a big 
part of what makes it fun, we'd all collect Opterons and Pentium 4's!

[[ For the archives: 'outdated' != 'unuseful'. I've taken to using my Model 
100's in the kitchen for recording recipes -- much easier than pen and 
paper, and more rugged than my Linux laptop... ]]

Besides, quite often 'outdated' == 'almost unbreakable'. *knowing* a piece 
of test gear will work when needed means a lot more to most than 'new & 
improved' despite the bells & whistles.

>>Are there Nixie tubes still in production?  If so, cool and
>>all-power-to-it.  If not, let's be cautious in our enthusiasm.  This is
>>a 'core-plane wall-hanging' type thing for some of us.

Which, of course, I'm still looking for one to put on my desk at work -- 
but I'm only looking for something that's not repairable...

I don't want it as a status symbol -- I want it for educational purposes. 
My cow-orkers (I'd assume like most of our customers) have no idea what 
core even *is*.

>I think Nixe tubes stopped production with the advent of LCD's.

You mean LEDs -- they arrived much sooner, and were much lower power than 
Nixies... (albeit not nearly as low-power as LCDs) -- and I would think 
they could be made much more inexpensively. Early on, I believe LEDs were 
also much less fragile than early LCDs; but that's an assumption.

Like almost everything in this world, production costs make a huge outcome 
to the availability of products...

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me
zmerch at 30below.com.         |
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers