Category Archives: Anything

Spent some time braking apart old and not very old computer mainboards. Collected few kilos of capacitors and MOSFETS for future experiments. Nice set. Press on image for big (600k) photo. So if you need to repair some mainboard’s capacitors, … Continue reading →

Today I spent some time breaking apart some TV transmitters. I was looking for power transistors. Opened one very strange module with heavy heat-sinks. This is the photo of transistors I found inside: It is Russian made Gallium Arsenide power … Continue reading →

Alternative output connection. In other post I used classic output connection- collector load. Browsing in the internet I found Russian schematics of electric shock gun. It is based on the TL494 chip. But the output was connected in different way- … Continue reading →

Typically in self made small hardware (DIY), power from mains transformed and rectified using simple wall “cube”. But this cube produces typically 12V. A bit too low for VFD. If I would like to use some higher voltage cube for … Continue reading →

While testing this device, do not overload, do not load asymmetrically. For checking your system, remove nixie and load secondary winding of transformer with simple resistor. Download small (~500kb XVid AVI): with oscillograms. And now take a note, that on … Continue reading →

Everything is working with simple passive mosfet drive. But if we increase switching frequency or place powerful mosfet (or even several mosfets)? There is no load in gate circuit, but there is gate capacitance. And if we need fast switching … Continue reading →

Now let’s make some high voltage! As the schematics is done on the breadboard, I can’t produce high power application. This is because of very long wires used in the experiment. Also there is no any heat sink on the … Continue reading →

the output of TL494 is quite weak, and we want more power. So we need some powerful transistors attached. The most easy to use (and very easy to get- from old computer motherboards) are n-channel power mosfets. We must invert … Continue reading →

Now let’s speak about the pins. GND (pin 7) and Vcc (pin 12) are usual power pins. Max Vcc is about 40V. RT (pin 6) and CT (pin 5) are used for setting clock (1 … 300kHz). The frequency of … Continue reading →

From time to time, in newsgroups, in www forums and in www pages, people speak about converting DC to DC, or DC to AC, charge-pumping, building inverters (step up, step down converters) for various devices. From high power car audio … Continue reading →