I have a Vacuum Fluorescent Display I want to use. Part of the fun of using such things is controlling 40-60 volts from a microcontroller of some sort.

I have another display on a driver board. That board uses several UDN6118A to control the high voltage with TTL level voltages. It's a simple 20-pin chip. It just requires GND and the high voltage, then it takes eight TTL inputs and converts them to the high voltage outputs.

...but, I can't find a 6118 anywhere. In trying to find something similar, all I can find is a surface mount chip that loads the data serially. I'd rather not use that both because it is surface mount and because of the serial data transfer.

Does anyone know of something similar to the 6118 and where I can get it without having to order a large quantity?

 

If it's something like a seven segment driver, you could use an IC meant for LED's and then use FET's as high voltage drivers.

 

The 6118 is just a bunch of darlington amplifiers on a chip. You could make up a board with several FETs (or suitable BJTs) and use the sockets on your existing board as headers for connection. Not exactly pretty, but would work.

Or you could send off to Norway for the part: http://www.parts4pinballs.com/product_info.php?products_id=623

 

I have no existing board, so I can do it with other components if I want to. The only problem is that whatever circuit I use, I need 40 of them. The UND6118A has eight circuits per chip, so I only need five, but that place in Norway wants $5.23 for just one of them.

I think I'll just do as you suggest and do it with individual transistors. A board with a bunch of transistors and resistors all in a row might look cool, and even if it doesn't, I'll probably forget all about it when I see this thing light up anyway.

Thanks, everyone.