New motherboard has vacuum tubes

[James_F]

Now this is a chipset after my heart!

http://www.aopen.com/tech/techinside/Bluetouch.htm

Since the stunning releasing of the first vacuum tube motherboard in the industry of motherboard manufacturers, AOpen, once again, brings you the whole new vacuum tube motherboard. For personality and characteristic, 8 luminescent blue LEDs was designed scattering around the vacuum tube to break away from the traditional rigid layout design that motherboard gives us. Whenever you boot up the system, the 8 amazing blue LEDs would diffuse their luminescent lights, and it would be an excellent combination if they could go with the See-Thru Chassis (transparent chassis) of AOpen.

[Scott Greczkowski]

Not only is it a fast computer, but it also heats your entire house :lol:

[AllieVi]

They're more common than you might think. I read somewhere that cars even have a version of vacuum tubes.

[James_F]

And you'll look good also.

Actually I do have an amp with tubes in it on my system right now. My Denon receiver has all the surround sound, but no pre-amp. My old Harmon Kardon pre-amp helps be play all my old records. Tubes are the way to go and I'm glad to see them reappearing in audio again.

[raj2001]

I've owned a couple of hybrid ham radio HF transceivers with 6146 tubes in their finals and the spectral purity of their output signal was a heck of alot better than models with transistor finals.

But as for it being on a computer motherboard - I think it's just for cosmetic value more than anything else.

You can also bet your life that those machines won't be energy star compliant ;)

[TopCat99]

Yeah, what raj says! My Kenwood TS-520 takes the 6146's for finals. And it's got a 12BY7A driver. THe rest of it's solid-state, tho *sigh*

Vacuum tubes/electron tubes/valves... call 'em what you want, you gotta love 'em!

And they do produce much better RF (and AF, as James said) than any ol' transistor :D

[Russell R]

Some forty years ago, a writer for Audio magazine wrote a tongue-in-cheek article describing all the problems transistors presented to engineers when designing high-end audio amplifiers.

He concluded by saying: "Of course, all my problems were solved when the vacuum tube was invented."

[Neil Derryberry]

What will the kiddies think when their motherboard goes microphonic?

I love tubes!

[Bob Haller]

Oddly enough vacuumn tubes will be coming back in vogue thanks to terrorism. A nice EMP pulse weapon can stop computers and everything using ICs in its tracks. But vacuumn tubes just keep on ticking.

So much of our economy depends on computers. Imagine just 2 purchased EMP pulse weapons from russia detonated over the central us shutting down commerce thruout the entire country. Scary stuff, all cars with computers, power grids off line, computer operated furnaces out of business. Would devastate the econmy while killing few if any people.....

Food in citys has to be delivered daily, your local grocery store doesnt have more than a few days stock on hand. Disabled cars would gridlock roads so even military vehicles who use standard ignitions would have a tough time getting thru.

Even homebuilt devoices could have the same effect on a city or region. Popular mechanics had a article on this not long ago.

With all computer chips damaged or destroyed it would take forever to get our economy running again

[TopCat99]

Damn! I should hit eBay for a Heathkit HW-101 very soon... :)

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Bob Haller
Oddly enough vacuumn tubes will be coming back in vogue thanks to terrorism. A nice EMP pulse weapon can stop computers and everything using ICs in its tracks. But vacuumn tubes just keep on ticking.

So much of our economy depends on computers. Imagine just 2 purchased EMP pulse weapons from russia detonated over the central us shutting down commerce thruout the entire country. Scary stuff, all cars with computers, power grids off line, computer operated furnaces out of business. Would devastate the econmy while killing few if any people.....

There was a really good book called "War Day" where just a few missles hit the US but the EMP killed everything computer wise. And two reporters go across the country to see what life has become. It is a very quick & good read (for a relatively thick paperback) if you want to pick it up.

The big issue is to backup the data to non-magnetic media that is not succeptable to EMP (CD/DVD-RWs???) and make sure the systems that run the big financial and govt agencies are below ground and shielded (not so easy as it sounds)

[gcutler]

Originally posted by TopCat99
Damn! I should hit eBay for a Heathkit HW-101 very soon... :) And back to the days 1 warehouse = 1 server :D

I had to build an add-on to the house so I could install my Neo-Dell Tube PC :D Which I ordered via the new Telegraph-Net.

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