OK, it's all working, and the case is most of the way constructed, battery backup and diode gates work like a charm, there's just one little thing left
when the tubes are off, the entire circuit (all 12 IC's) draws 28mA, not even enough for my power supply to realize power is even being drawn (it wont light up, but still provides power, so i dont care)
When the tubes are on, it draws ~205-230 mA, quite a bit
this all leads me to believe that the tubes and their powering circuitry is drawing about 200mA, which is to be expected.
Apparently, however, when powering all tubes with a single 555 and FET, the chip and fet get quite warm. I ran it for over an hour, and nothing failed, it was just warm enough to feel; probably around 90F
So, this bothers me a bit. As I understand, my options are-
add a heatsink
add a fan
use bigger parts
use 2 tube power supplies (was the idea originally but one died, and I never got around to re-doing it)
or any combination
are there any other, easier options, or will any one of those work, or should I not worry about it?
thoughts?
when the tubes are off, the entire circuit (all 12 IC's) draws 28mA, not even enough for my power supply to realize power is even being drawn (it wont light up, but still provides power, so i dont care)
When the tubes are on, it draws ~205-230 mA, quite a bit
this all leads me to believe that the tubes and their powering circuitry is drawing about 200mA, which is to be expected.
Apparently, however, when powering all tubes with a single 555 and FET, the chip and fet get quite warm. I ran it for over an hour, and nothing failed, it was just warm enough to feel; probably around 90F
So, this bothers me a bit. As I understand, my options are-
add a heatsink
add a fan
use bigger parts
use 2 tube power supplies (was the idea originally but one died, and I never got around to re-doing it)
or any combination
are there any other, easier options, or will any one of those work, or should I not worry about it?
thoughts?