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A project log for ИГГ1-64x64M Adventure

Driving and use the ИГГ1-64x64M. High voltage vacuum dot-matrix display made in Ukraine in the 80's by Gazotron

muthMuth 02/02/2018 at 15:150 Comments

Even before receiving the panel from ebay, I sought information on internet about how to use these displays. There is of course a short datasheet supplied with it, but no clear schematics for a driving circuit. The datasheet is shown in the dittohead's page.

I found someone managed to display a space invader on the 32x32 version and made a video of it :

I tried to extract a schematics from the video, but the type of the transistors and some values of resistor and capacitors are unreadable.

I deduced the following circuit, where the 360v needed to ignite the elements are produced by switching in serial with a 180v source a capacitor charged at the same 180v.

So I started to reproduce on a breadboard the circuit for one anode, and put one cathode to the ground. I used a 'nixie' high voltage power supply (by lumos.sk, nicely done by the way), some stupid guesses for the resistor and capacitor values, small diodes, and MPSA42 transistors.

I got the 360v short pulse when I put the transistor Q2 base to 5v.

And it lights up.

But a bit too bright, in the sens of I'm damaging the elements. It is clear too much current is drawn, or the pulse is too long. After few minutes of running the pixel got dark, event not powered, the burn is visible.

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