thyraton & dekatron

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Benoit Tourret

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Jan 26, 2023, 4:48:09 PM1/26/23
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Hello,

I am looking for information about Dekatron device "as a compute device", what are the main differences between all the models, 
and also about the thyraton mtx-90.
what was their first usage and so on...

Mac Doktor

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Jan 26, 2023, 5:14:24 PM1/26/23
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I'd like to know more about the MTX-90 as well. Have you seen these?:



Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"


“...the book said something astonishing, a very big thought. The stars, it said, were suns but very far away. The Sun was a star but close up.”—Carl Sagan, "The Backbone Of Night", Cosmos, 1980


Jon

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Jan 27, 2023, 4:16:53 AM1/27/23
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Welcome Ben, good to have you here.  It's a bit difficult to know where to start with your question on dekatrons without writing pages of stuff which might not be on point. A good start might be to get hold of a copy of Electronic Counting Circuits by JB Dance - that has a long chapter on dekatrons and related tubes, and there are scans floating around (can't remember if we have one here). Are there specific tubes you want to understand better?

Jon.

Benoit Tourret

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Jan 27, 2023, 4:32:49 AM1/27/23
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Of course, I already see it, but I prefers this one : https://www.ebay.fr/itm/322631444720 ;-)

Grahame

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Jan 27, 2023, 4:41:18 AM1/27/23
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Hi

There is a copy in the groups Document folder:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzH-L4OXjfbRYTRHU01jcDk1c3c?usp=sharing

Grahame

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Benoit Tourret

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Jan 27, 2023, 5:35:57 AM1/27/23
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When I was learning at the Control Data Institute in the early eightees, we worked on a computer whitch only had discrete components. no IC, only transistors, diodes, resistors and condensators. and a tore memory. there was a backbone and hundreds of small cards where pluged on, each card was a or, a nand or any logical door or a flip-flop (register).
there was no keyboard nor screen, just 28 switches and 28 lights, one raw for address, the other for the data. but it was 0 and 1, the beginning of the ordinary logic
are the dekatrons working on 0 and 1 (1 + 1 = 10) or working on differents level of tension ? such as in Concorde (the plane) where 1V + 1V = 2V

is this tube is only a "display" or does it have an active part of the compute process ?

fot the MTX-90, if there is a gate, this is not just a display.
Does it is just a light activated with a small input or rather a "transistor" ?

Grahame

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Jan 27, 2023, 5:53:28 AM1/27/23
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This is probably the best known dekatron computer

https://www.tnmoc.org/witch

Dekatrons both "compute" and "display" making them very versatile. Read the chapter in the book by JB Dance that Jon referenced and you'll see how they work.

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Richard Scales

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Jan 27, 2023, 11:07:21 PM1/27/23
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I was stood next to that last Sunday  - we actually got right in to the coding and how all the instructions worked as we single stepped through the code. Our guide said that some people use Dekatrons to garnish their clocks so  I showed him a picture of my 'Harwell' from Sgitheach - which he found suitably impressive!
 - Richard
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