On 2019/12/11 6:50 p.m., Michael Terrell wrote:
On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 8:21:29 PM UTC-5, Trevor Wilson wrote:
On 12/12/2019 10:10 am, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article ,
says...


**The very first test I had to pass, before entering the electronics
biz, was a colour blind test.



As most electronics have now gone to the SMD the color code is not worth
too much.

Most of the SMD resistors I have seen are marked as to resistance.
However the SMD capacitors have no markings at all. Sort of backwards to
me. Almost everyone will have a meter that can measure resistance, but
maybe not the capacitors at hand.

**True enough now. I started in 1971. Digital meters were the realm of
seriously cashed laboratories only. Even then, NIXIE tubes ruled.

The first one that I saw was Non Linear Systems, in the late '60s. It had just been purchased by the local steel mill for their research center. One of their engineers brought it to our high school Electronics class to show it to us. It used an electro mechanical display that was slow to update. I wasn't impressed.

https://stevenjohnson.com/nls/index.htm is an example.


Sounds like telephone steppers running the display tubes - one stepper
per tube...

The same sort of display and stepper was used in some 1960s arcade games
- Nutting's COMPUTER QUIZ was one of them. Here is a video I did of that
machine from a year or two ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr98ASLdbZQ

I didn't go into the scoring with the Nixie tubes and the telephone
steppers in that video, should do that if I make another...

John :-#)#


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