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The super tiny tubes are cute. They look like they have to be soldered in though. Could be annoying to replace when they break down? The bigger tubes are socket
by tachyonbeam 7y ago
The super tiny tubes are cute. They look like they have to be soldered in though. Could be annoying to replace when they break down? The bigger tubes are socketed.
- klodolph 7y agoThere are special types of high-reliability tubes used for computers. If I recall correctly, one of the tradeoffs is that they use a different alloy for the wire, which makes the wire more expensive to manufacture because the process wears out the tooling more quickly. I can’t find the article where I found this information, though.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoThe key to long life for valve (tube) computers was never turning it off.
- klodolph 7y agoThat’s not really the key. When ENIAC was first run, several tubes would fail each day—and yes, it was turned on all the time. They addressed these problems by adjusting heater currents. In general, there’s a tradeoff here because you don’t want to strip the cathode (which can wear out a tube quickly) and you want good performance from the tube. The on-off cycle effect on filaments is also largely due to surge currents with a cold tube, at least for typical designs, and there are various techniques to limit the surge currents which will extend tube life.
- userbinator 7y agoThese were socketed too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuvistor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuvistor
- tachyonbeam 7y agoYa, but could you source 8000 of those today at a reasonable price?