Onno's Electronics Page

On this page I want to share my fascination with electronics. Being able to understand, build and fix electronic devices, magic objects of the time I was living in, gave me a lot of satisfaction as a hobbyist. Nowadays, electronic devices are becoming smaller and smaller and increasingly difficult to change or repair. Still, it gives me a good feeling to fathom and fix them.

To make electronic devices really look like magic objects, they should glow in the dark. A lot of the pages on this site are about obsolete electronics, equipment that used thermionic valves or gas discharge tubes that make light and heat. These are devices that are too large, or too unsophisticated for today. They seem to be easy to understand. Nevertheless, they are technological achievements of their time, sometimes hard to understand and always worthy to mention. Read on and enjoy.

The site has four chapters:

Valve Veneration
Read about radios, scopes and other old-days electronic equipment, based upon Thermionic Valves (or call them Electron Tubes if you like).

Neon Nostalgia
Covering nixies and other neon tubes, electronic devices that depend on ionised gas to function. There are also references to neon display resources. On a separate page How To Drive Nixies, I'll discuss the principles for nixie driving circuits.

Intricate Instruments
Electronic measuring instruments are the tools of the trade for any electronic engineer. I have collected a number of mostly old instruments to use and to admire their ingenuity.

Projects Page
Clicking on the "projects" link will bring you descriptions of some electronics projects that I built.