Valvo datasheet "Valvo Brief" from 26.04.1970 with DDM14 circuit - does anyone here have this?

[Dekatron42]

Hi,

I've been trying to get hold of the schematic diagram for the Valvo DDM14 driver for the ZM1200 Pandicon for some time now, even tried to get in contact with the gentleman who wrote about it here but haven't heard anything: http://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_zm1200.html

Does anyone here on the forum have a copy which they have scanned that they could share? I'd like to build the original design.

/Martin

[Nick]

Hi,

As you know, there is a small amount of info in German - from what I understand, the DDM14, whilst aimed at the ZM1200, will happily drive pretty much any group of up to 14 "normal" nixies.

It seems to be a shifted in bitstream + latch, nothing unusual, but only drives 0-9, i.e. has no decimal point support.

This is an interesting idea - the ZM1200 is a great tube, really designed for calculators - 14 digits are quite a lot.... I find the ZM1206 at 8 digits a bit more useful ("dd-mm-yy" or "hh.mm.ss" fit nicely).

NIck

[Dekatron42]

Hi,

Yes, I found a small amount of information on a few German forums but not the original datasheet/book.

Yesterday I tried once more to contact the gentleman who wrote the original piece at Radiomuseum.org and this time he answered me that all of the text was written there, that there were no more information in that "brief".

I also found that Mullard described the module briefly in the "Mullard Tubes & Special Products" book from 1972-1973.

I had hoped to find a schematic so that I could build the original design so the search goes on.

I also wonder if it could be the design shown in this book http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/dat_arch/ZM1200_valvo.pdf.

/Martin

[Nick]

As Valvo were part of Philips, I dropped a line to Ronald Dekker, who, as we know, a) has access to the Philips archives, and b) has a deep interest in this sort of stuff - maybe he'll be able to help?

Nick