Photos of my first Nixie Clock

[Tom Katt]

Was going through some old files and found photos of my very first Nixie clock build from the 90's...  Really more of a "re-assembly" than straight up build - I had purchased a Systron Donner counter/timer from Surplus Sales of Nebraska and basically took the innards and reformed it into a clock display with acrylic I had cut at a local glass shop.  I loved the nasa-style illuminated push buttons and thumbwheel switches for setting the time.  I also tripped out an analog meter movement and used it as a 'pendulum' that clicked with the seconds.  Learned quite a bit along the way.

Also - just for fun - some shots of my 'wall computer' system in the lab lol...

[Leroy Jones]

Oh how cool!    There must be something about a small clear clock case with a set of 4-digit thumbwheels on the front.

Something that gets into a person, and the only way to work with it is make it that way.   Nice work!   What all does "Colossus" do?

[Tom Katt]

On Wednesday, December 17, 2025 at 2:16:02 PM UTC-5 Leroy Jones wrote:

Oh how cool!    There must be something about a small clear clock case with a set of 4-digit thumbwheels on the front.

Something that gets into a person, and the only way to work with it is make it that way.   Nice work!   What all does "Colossus" do?

'COLOSSUS' was my wall mount computer that used a scrolling led sign to display things like cpu load, temps, disk io, etc.  Based on the infamous evil computer in Colossus: The Forbin Project ;-)  I think I was ahead of my time - I also programmed a 'chatbot' (not AI - this was the late 90's and the iPhone had not even been released yet) that took verbal input from a hacked Dragon Naturally Speaking program and responded with a synthetic voice and display...  It was like Siri before there was a Siri.  The computer responses were somewhat canned - it used lookup tables and operated similar to the famous ELIZA program, but it was still amazing for the time.