SBC6120 (a build-it-yourself PDP-8 clone) grammer checked

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Friday 16 June 2006 07:53 pm, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 6/16/2006 at 5:00 PM woodelf wrote:
> >Since you got more books than me, Do you have anything on the
> >frequency response of 0b2 voltage regulator with the standard .01 uf
> >bi-pass cap? I was hopeing to use a few in my latest amp?
>
> It's not above medium audio frequencies. (a few KHz at best).
>
> The odd thing about gas-discharge tubes is that they work at all by sheer
> probability.
>
> If you can exclude all external and internal radiation (e.g. gamma
> particles, light), a neon bulb won't fire at a voltage anywhere near its
> spec-sheet level.  The ionization avalanche needs an energetic particle or
> photon to get it started.  That's why neon bulbs fire at higher voltages in
> a dark room than in a lit one.  Manufacturers put a bit of radioactive
> material (sometimes Krypton 85) in the gas mix to even things out.  Very
> old gas diodes tend to operate a bit more unpredictably than new ones
> because a fair amount of the ionizing trigger material has decayed.
>
> The curious upshot then, is that the time from the application of voltage
> to the full ionization of a gas diode isn't consistent.

I find those parts interesting,  anyhow.  Which is why I've got myself an OC3 
tube here,  and some neons,  to play with one of these days...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
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