[GTALUG] Aging Dell monitor (U3011) - valve/tube amp digression

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 2018-03-10 12:02 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> 
> BONUS
> 
> If you want to be neo-retro, you can buy an audio amplifier with tubes AND 
> bluetooth …

In the everything-old-is-new-again department, Korg recently announced a
triode thermionic valve amplifier in a DIP package: the Nutube
<http://korgnutube.com/en/>. This is a commercialization of an idea
that's been kicking around amateur radio for a few years: using a vacuum
fluorescent display (VFD) as an amplifier¹. Sometimes it's nice to hear
about a chip that doesn't have vulnerabilities built-in.

So saying, knowing VFDs sensitivity to magnetic fields it might be fun
to extend my pleasantly futile research into artisanal hardware random
number generation with a Nutube. Tube-based random number generators
were proposed by Turing for the ACE (1945-46) and later used in RAND's
"Million Random Digits" (1949)
<https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html> and in ERNIE
(1957), the UK Premium Bond computer.

cheers,
 Stewart


¹: this is the oldest ref I could find, from 2005:
<https://www.electronicspoint.com/threads/vfd-as-an-audio-rf-amplifier.29314/>