On this last day of this year I want to take the opportunity to wish you all a
very good and happy 2022. May 2022 be better than 2021, and let's hope that the
Coronavirus will extinguish itself by mutating into an even more infectious and
at the same time more powerless version. I hope the "pi" version will make
Corona so harmless that it will not lead to deaths anymore across the globe.
I have had some days off (yay!) and therefore have had some time to put a little
bit of time into my hobbies. Very relaxing. I ordered a Nixie clock kit from the
AliExpress website, and got it delivered on time to be able to tinker with it.
I had some old Siemens ZM1242 Nixie tubes (8 of them, of which 6 worked) lying
around for about 16 years, and I finally wanted to do something with them. So I
ordered the kit and assembled the clock. The kit was actually for IN-14 Nixies
but after careful dissemination of the datasheets of both tube types, I found
out that by shifting all pins one place, and also not connecting one of the
decimal points (the IN-14 has two, the ZM1242 one) the kit could be used with
ZM1242's.
As my tubes were old (I salvaged them from an old cable production machine that
underwent a refurb) not all digits are pristine, but in my opinion that gives
the thing a certain sense of being authentic: These tubes have had a long work-
ing life already. I hope they still last me a while though.
I will show a picture of the clock here. Please look for the file.
Tonight we will be with family to wait for the new year and celebrate the old
one. I am actually happy there is a ban on fireworks this year, so the air will
be a lot cleaner tomorrow than it usually is on new years day.
