Tag: clock

I brought a Wang 360 calculator console back to life with a modern “Electronic Package”. Not only does it emulate the original Wang calculator’s behavior, but it can operate as a nixie clock or as a Reverse Polish Notation calculator.

There are zillions of nixie clocks on the web, so I’ll just discuss the atypical features and problems I encountered.

One of my most precious possessions is a Heathkit GC-1107 clock I assembled as a kid. But it has some shortcomings: it loses the time and alarm setting if the power is interrupted, and adjusting it for Daylight Saving Time is a pain. So I decided to retrofit it with a GPS receiver to get the correct time.

Many people are turning old hard disks into clocks. They disassemble old disk drives and put a clock mechanism behind the mirrored disc platter. They’re using 3½” disks, so they end up with itty bitty little clocks. I wanted something big enough to hang on the wall and retro enough to satisfy my nostalgia for the computers of my youth.

My neighbor put a working Heathkit oscilloscope out in his trash. Naturally, I rescued it. Time to make another clock!

I wanted to design a clock from scratch. I ended up with a expensive, over-engineered, multiprocessing monstrosity. But it was fun.