Dan Maloney
Greetings all, welcome to the Hack Chat. I'm Dan, I'll be moderating today along with Dusan as we welcome Fran Blanche to talk about Vintage displays. I'm not sure I've seen her log on yet, though -- you out there, Fran?
Hey all!
Hi Fran, welcome aboard!
My IBM Model 8 is ready to go.
330 baud for life...
heh
So I think we're all pretty familiar with you from Fran Lab and Fran Tone, but maybe you can just give the newbies a quick intro?
330 baud could be survivable, with enough bits per symbol.
Quick would be impossible but I'm really full time FranLab these days...
I've posted hours of condensed back story on the channel in several long form videos...
Gotta say, watching all that drama about having to find a new space was kinda heartbreaking. Hope the rent situation stays stable for a while.
It's always at risk. In Brooklyn I got tossed out of my first Frantone factory that I had built with a paid lease. Nothing is ever certain.
I guess everyone's holding off on their questions till later.
Or maybe I've put everything out there already...
I guess I'll start us off then -- what's the latest on your upcoming ride of G Force One?
Fran, Hello from Edinburgh Scotland. I enjoy your videos, especially those featuring displays like the unboxing collection a few years back, and the NASA segment display. I am completely obsessed with LEDs and displays myself, I have almost everything from the Monsanto MV1 to the more recent HP hybrid displays. Perhaps one day we could arrange a swap / trade?
All systems are go. There is a lot involved just to get on the plane, but I hope we've sorted everything out.
@Patrick Hickey - I get asked all the time to trade or sell stuff, but FranLab is basically a museum so I will keep it all together for posterity.
as a lover of obscure (and not) museums, would/have you even considered a future public display? similar to what LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER is working towards with the synth museum?
It's really all about cost. In Philadelphia public space is expensive and weirdly hard to get. I'd love to do it, but it would cost a fortune.
This feed is sort of like a bunch of people standing quietly by a freeway waiting patiently for a crash to happen.
That's pretty cool. Wonder if it's solid inside or actually has walls. Where's that displayed?
The Franklin Institute. I imagine it's very hollow.
It's summer -- maybe everyone is taking a siesta.
@Fran Blanche what would you consider the rarest, most obscure or favorites of your display collection?
Politicians are like bells. Noisy and hollow.
Hard to say what the rarest is, since doing the original NIMO videos they've been popping up here and there. So far the Bina-View still seems to be one of a kind.
Are the multidigit vintage displays multiplexed or statically driven? the static ones can be pretty handy for eg. time/counter/whatever displays for high-speed camera work where the multiplex would hopelessly flicker.
Multiplexing did not really become a thing until digital calculators. I prefer direct drive because I hate the flicker of MUXed displays.
Fran, that big lot of surplus from the university lab cleanout seems like it was a major score. Any tips for the rest of us on finding stuff like that?
It's pure luck. I had an even bigger haul back in 2002 at Columbia University - and some other small ones - but it's always I get a call or email from someone telling me that a room full of gear is going into a dumpster in two days or whatever and would I like to go through it... it's always something like that. But you don't want to do try it yourself - you really don't! It's a 20 ton boat anchor waiting for you.
But you make it look like so much fun, going through all those treasures.
...And you always have to leave the coolest stuff behind. At Columbia they had a completely hand-built analog computer there that took up an entire wall. I couldn't haul it... It went to land fill.
@Fran Blanche Wow I just had a look at your video of the Bina View - looks great, never seen one of those (reminds me of the projection units) very complex and clever piece of engineering, but rather clunky! Have you had a look at a Dynamic Scattering Matrix LCD?
LCD's just don't do anything for me.
Here's one of my most unusual LED displays, Siemens PDOG 3416, appears to be a prototype, red+green LEDs on the same display!
Seems like it needs a filter in front of it, but which color would you choose?
Filtering LED's is kinda not possible because it is always one very specific wavelength, so any lens that is not 100 in line with passing that frequency just dims the display.
... That being said I have seen blue filters on red displays, or the like but it honestly just makes the readout hard to see,
T-20 and counting....
sounds like you need a big storage space somewhere dry. Something like the place where aircraft are mothballed...
@Dan Maloney Photographing LED displays is tricky, but a neutral density grey filter usually looks best, hides the gold traces. this was actually a glitch resetting the MCU to get both to light at the same time, I don't think the drivers are capable of displaying red+green at the same time.
@Thomas Shaddack - I have the Vault and a few other rooms not so well controlled, but it is very expensive just to keep the stuff, not even counting trying to inventory it and move it around.
So do they basically have two LEDs connected in "reverse parallel" across the X- and Y- lines of a matrix?
I imagine the driver is current limited. People don't often realize how much the early LED dies would draw.
Travelling Willbury's "Cool Dry Place" comes to mind...
You pay a lot for a cool dry place in the city. Even the dark damp places are not cheap.
@Dan Maloney that might be it... I need to investigate further, here is the Siemens sales engineers display case, housing 9 separate MCU boards each with demo units.
Would something outside the city help? Balance the cost of logistics against cost of rental?
Wow, those are actually a lot more legible than I would have thought. Especially that one in the upper right.
Back in those days they didn't know how to make them cheap, so they had to make them well.
Where the city ends and begins is vague - weirdly when I lived far outside in the burbs storage was really no cheaper. No free ride these days. You have to go Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there to start seeing cost reductions.
And I love the resources they put into sales demo units back in the day. I suppose they still do, but the old stuff is cool.
What about VFDs? Vacuum or gas-filled stuff in general? Rad-hard displays (is there something like that or would the crew be a glowing toast before the degradation of the electronics becomes a concern?)?
Displays for extreme conditions - cold, hot, vibrations...?
Hi Fran, thought I would have missed this. I love your videos on vintage displays, and have even started to try and start collecting. Coincidently enough at the moment a NEMO tube is on ebay, first time I've seen one there in years.
@Dan Maloney Yes, that was a lucky ebay find about 10 years ago, it cost more to ship and import tax than the item itself but it is one of my most treasured relics! I have a couple of other LED demo units, including Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor and Monsanto... I plan to do a write up on these on hackaday in the future.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/324745365907?hash=item4b9c550993:g:MBIAAOSwGaJhEDz~
Vintage Readout Tube aka NIMO Tube - IEE 6000-92-0006 - Very rare | eBay
Excludes: Alaska/Hawaii, US Protectorates, APO/FPO, Africa, Asia, Central America and Caribbean, Europe, Middle East, Oceania, Southeast Asia, South America, Angola, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, French Polynesia, Libya, Mongolia, Suriname, Guyana, Panama, Mauritius, Brunei Darussalam, Chad, Madagascar, New Caledonia, Bahamas, Bermuda, Iran, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Western Sahara, Bolivia, Laos, Congo, Republic of the,
There's a bunch of Numitrons too...
Do the displays degrade over time? By what mechanisms?
I gotta say, the mechanics of the binaview is inspiring, it was quite awesome to see that vid
If the tube loses vacuum the getter goes white, so its easy to spot - but of the tubes I have only one really works well. They had lots of issues with the internal geometry in the production process.
The best value in vintage displays right now are Panaplex.... lots were made form pinball machines and there is little demand for them.
T-5 and counting....
Yeah I was able to pick up a panaplex multimeter for pretty cheap about a year ago. But I will say there's something about the nixie format that I enjoy more then the panaplex.
@Fran Blanche have you noticed a decline in the interesting displays and rare LEDs available on ebay over the recent years? ACP surplus was one of my favorite sellers for vintage components...
Supply and demand. Rare stuff gets rarer every year.
We're in overtime, but if there are any more questions just shoot 'em out here....
OK, so I think we're up against our time limit, so we've got to let Fran get back to the lab. I really want to thank her for spending some time with us today, and to thanks everyone for stopping by. Fran, best of luck with the flight, and I know we'll all be looking forward to the videos that come out of that.
Best luck for you!
In case anyone needs context:
Cool! I'll be on them YouTubes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=745YqMF8GBY
You may like this. https://www.ebay.com/itm/114705307754
Hey, @Fran Blanche ... im no guitar-buff but i saw a weird circuit with a zener used for biasing, and thought that might make for an interesting guitar effect... upper portion of the cycles would be, say 1x amplified, while lower portion might be 0.3x... seen anything like that?
Couldn't that be done with a DSP? With an if-then or a lookup table, all sorts of transformations are possible.
Dsp's are the lcds of guitar-effects ;)
It's such a simple circuit, I imagine it'd already be a thing if it has a decent sound... but, it occurs that guitar output probably isn't 0-centered, so probably sounds different depending on pluck vigorosity, etc...
Discussions
Become a Hackaday.io Member
Create an account to leave a comment. Already have an account? Log In.