Minitrons, was Re: Seven Segment Displays

[Marvin Johnston]

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my question! The site at
http://www.sphere.bc.ca/ has a lot of older type displays and the
Minitron Seven Segment Displays were among them *including* a datasheet!
The pricing I've seen ranged from about $7.00 to $44.00 each used and
tested but so far, I haven't seen any prices for NOS parts. I do like
the $100.00 per digit though :).

> >The name 'minitron' seems to be floating in my brain for some reason...
> >
> >They could well be incandescent. I've seen such devices in a 16 pin DIL 
> >package, in a smaller package with 9 socket contacts on the back arranged 
> >like a miniature DE9 connector (those are used in the ICL Temiprinters 
> >for the column display, for example), and in a wire-ended valve-shaped 
> >envelope. 
> 
> I have a bunch of them too.  Four are in a counter I made back in 73,
> the rest are spares for it. Actually they are fairly nice and at about 
> 10MA brighter than leds of the time (I must ahve a dozen MAN-x series 
> LED 7 segments as well).
> 
> FYI: those things are considered rare as hens teeth as most systems 
> that use them have burnt them out. One series of ARC (used in cessna 
> aircraft) radios had them as they were bright enough for day use
> and I hear they cost about 100$+ per digit to replace.
> 
> Allison