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.”