The World’s Largest 555 Timer… Again!
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- Опубликовано: 29 июл 2024
- PCBWay is having a great Winter sale now, check it out here:
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We’re going back to an old one - the venerable vacuum tube 555 timer. This was a really fun project we took on a while back to try to make a 555 timer out of just vacuum tubes, and while the prototype made at home on the mill was excellent in every sense of the word, we were struggling coming up with a more professional looking version. Well, fear not, our sponsor PCBWay is here! PCBWay hooked me up with some pretty righteous PCBs, so let’s take a look at what they sent and see if we can get the new and improved 555 going.
Everything on the 555 timer is available here:
github.com/Nakazoto/ue555
Notably, here’s the link to the datasheet:
github.com/Nakazoto/ue555/blo...
And here’s the link to the gerber files:
github.com/Nakazoto/ue555/tre...
If you need tubes, I strongly suggest either 6AU6 or the 6CB6, both work brilliantly. Just search eBay or your local auction site for “6AU6 lot” or “6CB6 lot.”
The 7-pin sockets can be found on most online retailers like Amazon or AliExpress. Just search for “7 pin tube socket” and look for the ones that are PCB mount.
If you want to support the channel please hop over to Patreon:
/ usagielectric
Also, we now have some epic shirts for sale!
my-store-11554688.creator-spr...
Come join us on Discord and Twitter!
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / usagielectric
Intro Music adapted from:
Artist: The Runaway Five
Title: The Shinra Shuffle
ocremix.org/remix/OCR01847
Thanks for watching!
Chapters
0:00 A look back at the OG 555
1:28 The new hotness
2:30 A close look at the new PCBs
5:14 Let’s build it
7:50 A close look at the datasheet
9:10 Tuning the OpAmps
13:01 Testing: Schmitt Trigger
14:24 Testing: Astable oscillator
16:46 How do you get one?
18:53 What’s next? (The CSS555!)
21:49 Bunny! 
Наука
Tube-based 555 timers simply provide much warmer, more wholesome square waves.
18:06 has some very useful facts in the data sheet, including parameters such as “operating as a space heater” and “producing largely inaccurate timing delays” and of course the percentage of time that it works every time (less than 100% of the time)
Datasheets should be fun to read!
Its at 08:03 ;) Fun nindeed!
Nothing better than a datasheet that clearly states it will FRY a TTL part
Gotta get those disclaimers in early!
Brillant as always! 👍👍 We are much honored to partner with you, D 🥳
Thank you so much for all your help!
Ya'll offer those leg boards in non-RoHS leaded 60/40 solders?
The 555 timer, along with a lot of early IC's, was groundbreaking. Just having an easy to use product that did a lot of things in a small package, was amazing. I mean, the 16550 UART revolutionized serial communications.
Yup! The 555 is without a doubt one of the most influential and ubiquitous ICs in history! This is my homage to the greatest IC of all time. Well, maybe 2nd greatest, we still gotta build that CSS555 :P
@@UsagiElectric Another versatile circuit is the blocking oscillator. will work at low voltages - needs a transformer and a RC network for timing. Synchronizable. Was commonly used in TVs and early computers.
Lol, I remember buying my first 555 from radio shack to make a blinking led 😄
Me, too.
Was cleaning up my bookshelves over the weekend. Found my Radio Shack 555 timers project pamphlet!
finally an affordable and compact timer IC ! I love this...
Well, I've been fiddling with electronics for decades and I'd never heard of the CSS555 - when you started talking about the best chip ever made I assumed we would be seeing you make a thermionic Z80.
I hope this gets redesigned to use duel triode tubes like the ECC82/12AU7 or something to help shrink down the PCB and the fact that they still make them
Shrink down the PCB? Why would anyone want shrunken down electronic components?
@@graealex cool your jets bro, no one is talking microchips here
@@DanafoxyVixen you know not everything is an attack on you. Dude was playing. Laugh a little
¡¡¿PROPER DOCUMENTATION?!!
I give highest accolades for your perseverance, insistence, and otherwise massive undying efforts here! You’ve likely gone through the motions that would probably attain that item of yours an actual, bonafide UL stamp on it’s silkscreen. Provided that you paid the atrocious application costs, that is. REALLY COOL to see you do all this and share the whole lot of your work in the end!!
That was actually something I was working on a little while ago, interestingly with exactly the 12AU7.
It got put on hold because there were a few things I wanted to figure out first and foremost. Namely, a standard form factor that I can make a bunch of different ICs (555, 741, 7400, etc.) and have them all fit in the same footprint. But that raises more issues of how to handle the negative supply. So I've been mulling over some ideas in my brain and will hopefully get some designs that work pretty well in the future!
The 555 timer is ubiquitous for time-related circuits. But the 741 Op Amp (and others) have to be the most important, influential, widely used ICs. I see you made two op-amps in the tube 555. Have you implemented a 741 using tubes?
I'm imagining that this would be a great microprocessor for the ENIAC...
🤩
Love it, I made an attempt at a RELAY version of the 555 timer, still working on it though, designing an electro-mechanical amplifier is where I left it. When I get back to it I will let you know.
I've thought a lot about a relay 555 as well!
The hardest part is that the trigger and threshold input of a 555 need to be very high impedance and relays are inherently low impedance, so I don't think it's quite possible to do it as pure relay logic. But, the SR flip flop, discharge and buffer portion of it can all be done with relays relatively easily!
Wouldn't the simplest, and yet period accurate, 1 byte ROM be 8 soldered jumper wires? If you were willing to modernize an 8 position DIP switch would do the trick. Technically a 1byte MEPROM (mechanically erasable programmable read-only memory) 😁
You're right, the simplest would be jumper wires or toggle switches of some kind.
But, I've been looking for an excuse to play around with core rope memory for a while and this looks like a great candidate to get my feet wet!
I used to work with Walt Jung (555 Cookbook) at ADI in the 90s as an apps engineer. We were using Walt as an FAE (Field Applications Engineer). This is a great effort and project - congrats!
So happy to see the datasheet! I remember wanting one way long ago when you first made this thing.
I LOVE the "Who's awesome? You're awesome!" tagline on the silkscreen
That UE555 looks fantastic. :) You've done an awesome job with the Data sheet too. I've downloaded it.
Thanks!
I'm quite happy with how the datasheet turned out, even if there are still some mistakes floating around in there.
Great idea and excellent implementation. I not-so-secretly want one of these for the novelty alone!
*As far as offering kits to your viewers:* You could have the PCBs made in bulk (even 10 or 20 brings the price down considerably) and have the legs cut by Send-Cut-Send, again in bulk, and then ship legs, boards, and a BoM. Anyone attempting a project like this should be either to order the parts from Mouser or Digikey themselves or likely has a sizable pile of parts sitting around already. The board and the legs are the only significant barriers.
There are some decadal counting tubes out there. Those tubes are specially designed for counting up to ten and were used in vacuum-tube computers. The principle is same as your neon based counter just combined in one single tube and the deviation problem solved. For example Mullard made the Z503M and Valvo Z550M, which even have illuminated numbers integradet. I have 5 specimen Z503M by Valvo in my collection.
Yup, dekatrons would absolutely be the easiest way to do it! But, they also require quite a lot of voltage, often double what a standard NE-2 neon requires. My goal is to keep the whole project at a low +24V and -12V, which unfortunately rules out the easy solutions like dekatrons and neons.
Yay! PCBWay! I have gotten so many great boards from them. I'd love to see vacuum tube versions of 74xx series chips and eventually a circuit using the 555 with some of them. Oh, PCBWay has a marketplace thing where you can make your designs available without folk having to download and upload stuff they can just order directly.
They actually deserve special mention here because they were extremely patient with me making this video! It took months longer than I was expecting before I got back around to it and they were awesome waiting for me.
I do actually want to do a whole series of "DIP" vacuum tube replicas (like the 7400), but there's a few things I need to square away first. The -12V supply is always a nightmare to try to slip in. It works out on the 555 and 741 because I can replace one of the less used pins (like the CV pin), but on something like a 7400, there is no unused pin. So, it would be best if I could figure out a way to do it without needing a negative supply. Maybe by elevating the cathodes or even generating a negative supply on the board.
The next issue is, I want to come up with a proper form factor, a standard that all of them will follow, that way we can make a huge plywood board with sockets and wiring and just plug in our oversized ICs to make stuff work!
Oh my, a hollow state (or vacuo-vitrous, haha) 555! It was nice to watch you build it, and some great 150A scope action here too. Hot damn lovely.
Thanks Keri!
And I'm always looking for an excuse to get the 150A out, it's such a fun scope to use!
very neat project, I like the big 555, and there actually is a fairly easy way to solder aluminium with regular tin. if you would ever see this comment and wonder how, I be happy to explain
Ohh man! This built is definetly a piece of pure art! I love it! The NE555 was the first IC i used as a kid to build a squeeky sound generator 🥰
And thanks for sharing your awesome work! i really think about to build one for the shelf!
I'm very impressed. I never imagined that could be done so elegantly.
thank u man for sharing this, i really enjoyed datasheet, and video :] nice work!
This is a thing of beauty. I love the pcb legs, I'm totally stealing that from you for a project I'm working on. Thanks for doing this
Thank you so much!
Using PCBs without soldermask really worked brilliantly! I even had to resolder on leg because I got it crooked, and it was easy enough to clean up the solder, reposition and resolder it.
Have been waiting for this for a long while! Amazing!
I like the description paragraph on your data sheet @7:59
It's this sort of thing that shows why researchers were looking to replace valves and develop the transistor and why NASA had people developing integrated circuits in the 1960s.
I think for NASA, a reliability of "60% of the time, it works 100% of the time" may not be quite good enough 😂
Congrats, this is an amazing result.
If you get one of those spring-loaded router bits you can do a solder-mask with a router too. Gaps in the solder mask could serve as silk-screen-like text.
Awesome video. You are very skilled. As a janitor I am constantly impressed by you’re channel
Thank you for open sourcing it!
This thing is as weird as amazing!
Brilliant work on the datasheet!
Thank you! It was quite fun to write out actually!
Awesome, datasheet is funny....cheers !
For the output you could maybe use an extra output tube in place of the 220k to pull to ground to give it a lower impedance "low" state when the upper tube is off, might give steeper square waves
Cool project!
Glad to see that this project come to the incredible conclusion it has! Amazing work, dude!
What a great channel i found here 😍. Amazing stuff and very well explained! I love tubes and I really like your Oscilloscope 😍. Greetings from CPUGALAXY
Far out achievement! and thanks for the insight about the CS 555.
Supercool project!
This is mental. I loved it. When I read the title I thought you did a 55 with discrete components like transistors.
Pretty darned cool indeed
I still like how the bunny is like the mascot for the channel.
A heavily slewed square wave can often sound better than a very fast transition time after being run through filter chains in a synthesiser. Early transistors were often slow enough, but in modern times, it is almost obligatory to use tubes if you want that sound. Or else buy a bunch of vintage 60s and 70s transistors I suppose
Sharing the files for building and "debugging" like in the old times is the best way.
New subs here! This is an awesome project. This is one of the chips that I learned when I started electronics few years ago.
loving your work i like that 555 timer :)
Thank you!
nice video, i think a collab with jdflyback and his diy triodes would actually be very cool tbh, would be interesting to see a 555 timer made with triodes made completely from scratch would be absolutely awesome
That is a nice looking, populated board. Very nice. 🍻
If you ever do want to solder to aluminium or steel in future, I can highly recommend Topnik TS-81 flux. It works a treat but you need good fume control and to have read the clean-up info fully.
Complete with the very old school scope and sig generator (looks like HP, maybe), amazing amount of effort going into this, though I think your electron tube Motorola microprocessor project definitely takes the prize in that category.
The datasheet is so serious yet so funny. Sticking it to the man *"With questionable precise timing"*
Man what I would do if other datasheets did this.
Poking some fun at something otherwise very boring to read.
I like the idea of having to tune a 555 chip
should come with a certificate of calibration lmao
Great project to revisit. 😆
Brilliant device!
Very informative video Sir ..bunny part is cute 🥰
Definitely looking forward to the UECSS555
great work
it's actually just amazing!) it seems to be not difficult and I understand how to do it, but in reality it's very cool to do it
dude awsome!!!
Look! It's Max from Catfish right after he gets out of bed.🤣
Ba haha.... Love that data sheet... now I cant get Anchor-man quotes out of my head.
I imagine Doc Brown had to build something like this to repair the time circuits on the Delorean in Back To The Future 3. "No wonder this circuit failed, it says made in Japan."
note: if using this with breadboard and card edge connectors; it would be good to insert the pins into the card edge connectors before soldering the pins to the 555 PCB to prevent stressing the pins due to misalignment.
Cool project! The solution you came up for the legs is most practical. Nickel-plated copper might be a more 'authentic' lead frame material, but would be prohibitively expensive and too wasteful this scale.
Now you need a giant breadboard to go with it 🤣
Next project... UE 74181 ... for vintage computer affectionados that refuse to relinquish their tubes....
…bunmy!! I’m glad I stuck around til the end
Amazing work and awesome video. You might consider core memory instead of neons for the decade counter, or just use a boost converter circuit to get the voltage locally, but keep the user facing voltages low. As an aside, there's a relatively subtle high pitch tone though the video at around 10khz. I suspect noise from a flyback somewhere, might be worth throwing a notch filter on it in future videos for those of us that still have hearing up there.
The tone is there to disperse the young troublemakers from loitering.
Thank you!
I'll see if I can cobble something together with thyratrons first before digging into higher voltages, mostly for the challenge of it!
Interesting that there's a high pitch whine, there wasn't anything running in the background when filming, and I checked the audio in audacity's spectrum analyzer, and there's nothing above -48dB between 3kHz and 19kHz, so I'm not really sure what you were hearing. That's weird, maybe it's an artifact from RUclips?
@@UsagiElectric It is pretty faint and noisy but there's a stripe about 30Hz wide of noise right under 14k that I think is what I'm hearing. I don't think you'd see it as a single peak. I don't think it's RUclips as I don't hear it on other videos and that'd be a weird frequency to alias to or otherwise have issues. Audacity's spectrum analyzer defaults to log and pretty awful FFT size, switch to linear and bump up the FFT bin count and I think you'll be able to see it.
I've been a vacuum tube fan since the early nineties but I had never heard or read the expression "hollow state."
Those legs. Lol. Good luck on finding a socket.
Where is the bunny. I clicked for the bunny
edit: the bunny is at 21:50. What an adorable little puffball. SO CUTE with his frosted little feet and adorable eyes and little nose 😊😊
Great to see technology going “backwards”!!!
Reminds me of a reverse “Moore’s Law”!
A thing of beauty and a joy forever.
Now make a NE558 quad. Or maybe an MC14541 programmable timer.
This may be the time to look into inverted triode operation again - this allows a large current at very low plate voltages, at the sacrifice of gain. IIRC thyratrons are current-controlled devices, so this may help with reliable triggering.
Do you have any interest in setting this as an astable multivibrator and connecting it to a plant leaf to detect biodata fluctuations?
nice project, are you going to 3d print a socket for it?
What about making the counter an analog voltage with something like zeners for the trigger levels. It could help keep the pcb size down and can be done with fairly low voltages.
kinda impresive to see things put in perspective like that
just imagine, if this is what the 555 would have looked like with vacuum tubes, what kind of monster would you need to build a full sized high end computer of today with just tubes?
silicon really was a big step up, now imagine what happens once they discover the next step up from silicon, I sure hope that at least there is a next level and we didn't hit a dead end already
I notice that the tube count is down to 14 instead of the original 18.
And yes; I hope that you built the enhanced version of the 555. 🙂👍
I have no idea what I am watching but it is very interesting.
The first issue I thought about when you suggested core memory was that reads are inherently destructive, so the circuit needs to follow the read with a write if you want to preserve the prior value. That may or may not be a deal breaker, but speaking as someone building a tiny core memory kit at the moment it must be considered.
Core rope memory uses ferrite core as a transformer, rather than storing the data in the core. It’s read-only and doesn’t require a refresh. This was what the Apollo Guidance Computer used.
@@krallja You are thinking of an entirely different type than what I had mentioned. It is available as both ROM and RAM. When ROM the data is literally woven into the plane.
@@r2db Yes, I know. At 20:29 he mentions an entirely different technology: core **rope** memory, which is ROM. You mentioned core memory (no “rope”), which is destructively-read RAM.
Very nice job ^^
FINALLY a great way to make a gigantic Atari Punk Console.
Maybe show this to Look Mum No Computer for his museum
He's already made a modified Atari Punk Console for Sam with a much simplified schematic.
Awesome...Fun
Hey. Great project. Dumb question from someone who doesn't know tubes, though - you've said to use either 6AU6 or 6CB6 tubes. When I look them up they seem to be pentode or 9 (nonode?) pin units respectively. Is there a specific 6au6 that is heptode? The circuit seems to use 6 pins? Or have I just missed something really obvious?
Yes. Do it. Do it now!
Amusing that I'm getting vids like this recommended after poking about looking at the Volca NuBass (and eventually buying one).
Makes me wonder what you could do with the NuTube 6P1 dual triode that goes in it.
60% of the time, it works everytime ... LOL ... brilliant.
Hi, new subscriber here, just 15 seconds in the video, the bunny nixxie tube won me like 90% and the hair and beard did the rest.
Came here for the bunny. Was not disappointed.
Really makes me want to build 2 of them and have a tube based Atari Punk Synth :D
You know they do edge-plating as well right?
You could have had the legs looking fully tinned.
Which valves are being used? Do you get any cathode poisoning due to the low anode voltages? Great project!
is it possible to build integrated tube circuits?
Instead of many transistors on the same silicon, many triodes in the same vacuum chamber.
"I think it's awesome, I love it"
Nice!
Some questions:
- is it deliberate that you don’t have the outside of the pcb-legs connected? Or are there via’s you just didn’t show?
- the input totem pole that gave the 555 its name: why didn’t you use proper 5k resistors?
I noticed that, too. No vias in the legs, and only soldered on one side. I still think some laser-cut sheet metal would have been nicer. Although it's true that certain metals like stainless are hard to solder, unless plated.
@@graealex not only does the solder not like to attach to the material, it requires way too much heat. I think a PCB is a nice solution, but I would design them to use thermal isolated pads and stitching vias to connect the two sides.
@@ReneKnuvers74rk Solder does stick, you need a bit more aggressive flux and preheating is adviced.
But I can totally understand why the PCB solution would work out better, particularly when people want to build the kit at home.
Pretty snazzy!
I'm curious what the performance would be like if you ran "data shhet" plate voltages
Thanks!
The first thing that would happen if you put 100V on the VCC pin is all the tubes would light up like like bulbs and then promptly fry their filaments, haha. This is because I'm running the filaments in series off the main 24V rail (and two off the -12V rail). But, if we had a separate filament rail, we could definitely get it behaving a bit better with more voltage!
@Usagi Electric haha, right, thanks for the reply. I expected some modifications would need to take place first (for example, even if resistor values work as-is, which they probably don't, would likely need higher wattage rating). If someone went to that trouble, though, I would expect a noticeable improvement to the slew rate and frequency range. 150 to 300v would be more typical plate voltages (based on the equipment I'm familiar with).
What type of bunny is that? I love how the white fuzz contrasts with his brown fur. Too cute
Awesome job! Do you sell these PC boards?
I want this guy in my party for when I get sent back in time to 1955