Nixie mix & match tool for displaying text

[Martin Černý]

I've made a tool to mix and match nixie tubes to write any text. Check it out here:

https://nicethingsguy.com/tools/nixie-text-writer

I used data found on the internet, for the most part Swissnixie's database. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions.

[gregebert]

Very cool! I'm wrapping-up a project I started awhile back that uses character tubes, and the letters 'T'' and 'R' are the most-difficult for me to find, and are also among the most-commonly-used letters in English.

Right now I have about 25 various tubes that will display letters. Each tube is mounted on a plug-in board and I can arrange them as I wish; it's about 3 feet wide and I have space for 21 tubes. I posted a photo a few months ago.

If only I could find some b50113 tubes.....

[Martin Černý]

R is pretty much impossible sadly... for T, Z580M or ZM1049 are on ebay.

Dne pátek 14. srpna 2026 v 18:09:40 UTC+2 uživatel gregebert napsal:

[Dekatron42]

It's probably easier to get hold of a bunch of B5971's, or the larger B7971's, and spell words with those - might even be cheaper too, compared to getting hold of the rarer ones and sometimes the hunt for rarer ones is more rewarding.

Perhaps 10 or so years ago there was a seller in Poland who sold thousands of LL-555/556/557 & 558's, unfortunately someone best me to it - perhaps someone here on the forum owns them all?

[gregebert]

I want to stay with the traditional nixie theme, where each cathode is fully formed, rather than the segmented tubes. It's just been a bit of a challenge for some letters.

I have an 8-tube b7971 clock, and due to my own laziness I have not yet added texting other than day-of-week, month, and diagnostics. Yeah, I think b7971's are butt-ugly, but as Sir Mix-a-Lot said, I like big butts....

[Tomasz Kowalczyk]

557 and 558 are still fairly easy to obtain, but 555 and 556 just disappeared one day. 
That unfortunately was before I started collecting Dolam tubes... now I am missing just these two. If anyone has any for sale, I am very interested in buying one of each to complete my Polish nixies collection! I own rare prototypes but can't get my hands on these two regularly produced tubes...

[Tomasz Kowalczyk]

Two notes: when entering my surname, listing of tubes misses last letter. It is repeated in the word, so I guess it's just omitting repetitions, but at first I thought that there is supposed to be more.

Also, for L only B-50113 is listed. LL-558 can display this symbol as well

[Martin Černý]

You are correct, my primary source was swissnixie but it doesn't have the "L" listed, tube-tester does. Will fix that and maybe I should compare the data to tube-tester database as well.

Dne úterý 18. srpna 2026 v 9:04:42 UTC+2 uživatel Tomasz Kowalczyk napsal:

[Bogdan Paduraru]

here are the Burroughs with letters T and R that I have in collection 


B-40219
1,2,E,W,N,S,R,T,M,O or 0
B-4035
S,T,O,K,M (m is broken)
B-4038
A, E, G, H, J, K, L, M
B-5018
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,J,K
B-50317
Y, V, μ, K, D, A, M, E, O, C, S
B-50318
C,H,L,T,E,D,/,M,G,S,R
B-50322
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,J,K
B-5035
L,M,N,P,R,S,T,V,W,X
B-50351
N S E W T R L F
B-5093
I + C, B,S ,G,S,D,O,Q
B-590023
A,D,E,F,M,N,O,R,T
XXX JANx
+,-,A,D,f,G,H,L,W,R

[Bogdan Paduraru]

and some National :
PS: not only R and T ..

NL-1317
A,B,G,H,J,P,R,Q,S,T
NL-40219
1,2,E,W,N,S,R,T,M,O or 0
NL-4038

A, E, G, H, J, K, L, M

NL-1319
L,M,K
NL-50318
T,E,M,G,S,R,C,H,L,/,D
NL-814
 V Ω, F, P, R, T
NL-805
A,B
NL-886
N,S,E,W
NL-892
A,F,G,M,R,S,T,X,Y,Z
NL-916
F,A,P,M,T,C,B,R,X,Q