Driving an old electrostatic CRT with modern electronics?
 

Yesterday I was given an orphan 7" round CRT. It came out of an old automotive scope.

I was thinking about building something around it. I assume this CRT has a long persistance green phosphor so a computer monitor would be a better idea than a TV. Maybe an old Mac SE in a case styled after a 1940s style TV.

Is it possible to adapt a modern chassis to drive this CRT or would an old scope be a better starting point?

Pictures of the CRT to follow, I'm not at my usual PC at the moment.

Let us know your results, I'm surprised no AKer's mentioned experimening with pic tubes.

:scratch2:

I have an old true dual beam Philips scope tube, but i have given ut trying to get some kind of picture on it. I do not have suitable power supplies to do it, and the main problem is of course the 3kV 2nd anode voltage. I have also tried to test some old indicator/"magic eye" tubes, but again the only power supplies i have that may give suitable voltages are so powerful that a short circuit would be like a small explosion, and i would need rectifyers and probably some smoothing caps. If i understand right, there is one pin to "light" the beam and another one to control it? Does someone have a simple circuit to test a 6U5 indicator tube?

A 6U5, etc. tube does not need real high voltage...they are usually used at around 200-300 volt plate voltage in radios.

Here is a web page with more about the eye tube:

http://antiqueradio.org/magiceye.htm

CRT's are fun to play with and experiment with..!!
I am not sure if i am allowed to post this,but it is from a previous post on pioneer speakers repairs..look at my thread below.
http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthr...t=72637&page=2

Wow, I'm really envious of the clock. I'd love to have one of those.

David

Did you buy it as a kit or a 1 off? if a kit id like to get my grubby mits on one!

I purchased just the bare board and his eeprom,everything else i added..(capacitors/resistors,my own CRT,and my own cabinet)..
you cant buy them any more,but someone in germany has bare boards
for sale using their own design and eeprom.
.. another one i built shown in the pictures below..(the admiral bakelite cabinet was hard to photograph)
this set is using the same type of driver board,but without the HV multiplier,it is driving a 7JP1 crt..since 7JP4's are kinda hard to find.. it is a perfect functioning set.the set is complete w/it's working original chassis.all you do is unplug the CRT socket and re-attach the admiral chassis socket..ERIC H should like this one since it is a 7" admiral set..LOL
the board is epoxied to the inside top of the cabinet..it has been running on the same CRT for over 4 yrs now non-stop..

I've seen some of those scope clocks on other web sites before. They're cool, especially the one built into the Admiral TV.

I'd like to do something different though. Another thought I had today... A vector based video game, perhaps based on a Vectrex (thougth they aren't exactly easy to find).

Still I'm not in a hurry with this so I'm sure I'll come up with something eventually.

I have noticed that there is no part number on the CRT so that might slow things down a bit. Do these CRTs have a standard pinout?