Old School Nixie Clock

OK this is another Nixie clock right? WRONG! Ryan Brooks has gone old school, he built this clock around 31 year old processor technology! The controller chip is a MOS 6502, unlike modern microcontrollers this CPU requires a host of supporting circuitry and logic for it function. Ryan has all of the details you need to build your own on his site.

“So, I wanted a Nixie clock and I really wanted to design the hardware and program it myself. Most of the kits out there are based around a PIC or some other new, easy to use microcontroller. I thought it would be much more interesting to make a clock powered by an old school computer.

The result is a 6502-powered Nixie clock. I started this project about two years ago when large tubes (Z5680M in this case) were still available. Since then, any large tube is 5x the price it was — if you can find them.”