Onno's Electronics Page

This website is there to share my fascination for 20^th century electronics technology. When I was young, I became an electronics hobbyist when I found that you can understand, build and fix radios, amplifiers, color TV's and measuring instruments yourself. These were the magic objects of the time. Since, electronic devices have become smaller and smaller and increasingly difficult to change or repair. Still, there are a lot of things you can fathom and fix.

To make electronic devices really look like magic objects, they should shimmer and blink. A lot of these pages are about obsolete electronics that glow in the dark. Old equipment using thermionic valves or gas discharge tubes that produce light and heat. Devices that are too large, or too unsophisticated for today. They may sometimes look rough and primitive, nevertheless, they are technological achievements of their time. Some are complex and intricate and sometimes hard to understand if you do not have the knowledge. So they remain interesting. Read on and enjoy.

The site has five 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.

Odds & Ends
Finally, under "Odds & Ends" you will find stories of some other repairs etc, etc, etc.