Jeff’s quickie page of vintage NEON




Array of 7 x 30 NE2

I bought this on New York City's Canal Street in the early 80s from Argo/Trans Am Electronics (near West B'way).
It's an array of 7 x 30 NE2s deep inside highly reflective plastic wells.
The top PCB still has the 8: NS ulm1010 datecode 6943 (10 bit shift registers), driver transistor and resistor per NE2.
I stupidly desoldered the ones from the bottom board, intending to use latches instead of shift registers since I could not bear to waste I/O just to alter just one bit.
(In 1980, how was I to know that pin count would be more precious that CPU cycles? Back then, a 4 MHz Z80 was "king of the hill").

I'm still of the mindset that I'd prefer individual indicator control, despite the higher chip count.
I'm enamored with the 74259: 8-Bit Addressable Latch ever since I saw it in the Heathkit 6800 Microprocessor Trainer manual driving the 7 segment displays.
It's a 1-8 demux and 8: 1 bit latches in one chip. I figure I'll use one for each column, cascaded so they all form one address space with each lamp individually controlled.
I2C won't work: not enough addresses for 30: 8 bit buffers (unless I learn how to use bus extenders).


Yes, I bought only ONE of these cards from a mail order surplus catalogue (probably Poly Paks or John Meshna or Marlin P Jones or Herbach & Rademan or Delta Electronics or any of the other Mass places from the 80s).
It drives 2: Burroughs B-7971 Nixies (one upside down). It's from a Ultronic Systems Lectrascan Stock Market Ticker Display

More Nixie 7971 links:
I can't find the board's spec sheet. Does anyone have the schematic?


This panel of 16: NE2 neon lamps may not look impressive but I believe I salvaged it from deep inside an IBM 1620 card reader/punch. The plastic panel went in front with the legends.
It looks like bakelite, and dig that hand wiring with nylon lacing cord.

What's odd about it

I sold some displays on ebay.
Here are the photos with description with additional commentary/elaboration.

Click to enlarge.
Beckman SP-356 4 digit 7 segment Panaplex display with decimal points and keepalive.
Kudos to the neonixie-l folks who are keeping this technology alive with great web sites of tech and projects!
They're edge stackable for longer displays
The fill-nipple LOOKS broken but that's the way it was cut. It's sealed inside, and tested okay.
It looks new and unused.
Here are the specs from: http://www.babcockinc.com/babcock/documents/doc_3249.html

Neon eightron indicators

click here for the VFD eightrons!

Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
See, they pull apart easily, held in only by the grommet and leads.
The label showing it's a geniune Sanyo SMI-02 EIGHTRON
The right side uses 3 neon bulbs for negative, error, overflow.
Calculator board with 8: Sanyo SMI-02 eightron neon nixie-type displays
(not to be confused with the anime series Eightron).
It powers up but I don't have the pinout to add the keys.

The eightron is a 7 segment neon display with an 8th segment for the '4' to cross for easier reading.
The calculator board contains: For the photo, I applied 12 volts: - to the top, + to the bottom connectors with the thick trace.
And more eightron-style displays on the web: John Wolff's Web Museum The Sanyo ICC-1122 Electronic Calculator