Nixie tube cathode poisoning can be detected by monitoring the on-voltage and current through the Nixie tube while igniting the digit. Reversing and detecting cathode poisoning This blog is about the tips and tricks I learned getting these inexpensive IN-4 bi-quinary nixie tubes tuned and tweaked for good performance and longer lifetime. It turns out that cathode poisoning, bi-quinary digit ghosting, lead oxidation, and weighted burn-in were all problems to solve. However, this also adds to the complications. With a six-segment display, this equates to 36 registers versus 60. This method minimizes your high voltage serial shift registers because you only need six registers to represent all 10 digits in a single Nixie. Isn’t that simple? The IN-4 also has a unique option to drive the digits in a bi-quinary fashion. ![]() The datasheet seemed simple, just apply 170v between to the anode through a bias resistor, and then short the cathode of the corresponding digit to the ground to get that digit to display. I’ve been surprised how complicated driving IN-4 Nixie tubes with good results could be. ![]() ![]() IN-4 Nixie tube with odd and even anode connections for bi-quinary operation
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