Vacuum tubes

C

cuallito

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 11, 2004
Messages
68
Is it possible to replace those lone transistors and rectifiers in motherboards and power suplies with vacuum tubes for coolness factor. Has anyone done it?
 
cuallito said:
Is it possible to replace those lone transistors and rectifiers in motherboards and power suplies with vacuum tubes for coolness factor. Has anyone done it?
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there was a p4 mobo that had a tube amp on it for the audio stuff..

back in the day.. was kinda pimp
 
While transistors and vacuum tubes have similar functionality, the underlying circuitry is sooo different. Then there are the electrical characteristics. I really doubt that any vacuum tube will be able to handle the frequencies that the transistors on a motherboard handle. Everything else would have to be reengineered to work with the vacuum tubes. Then there is the heat issue. Vacuum tubes put off a lot of heat. Not to mention the physical aspects(last time I checked, vacuum tubes are considerably larger than transistors). If you just want the coolness aspect, put some vacuum tubes in your case, but don't expect them to do anything resembling modern computing.
 
jpmkm said:
While transistors and vacuum tubes have similar functionality, the underlying circuitry is sooo different. Then there are the electrical characteristics. I really doubt that any vacuum tube will be able to handle the frequencies that the transistors on a motherboard handle. Everything else would have to be reengineered to work with the vacuum tubes. Then there is the heat issue. Vacuum tubes put off a lot of heat. Not to mention the physical aspects(last time I checked, vacuum tubes are considerably larger than transistors). If you just want the coolness aspect, put some vacuum tubes in your case, but don't expect them to do anything resembling modern computing.
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that would be compu-rice. they make high frequency vacuum tubes, but they aren't the cool glowy kind.
 
No, you can't.

Good luck finding a vacuum tube diode which has 0.4 volts of forward voltage drop at 20A like the rectifiers on your motherboard, or a triode which has a Rds(on) of 0.008 ohms and can switch at 1MHz like the MOSFETs on your motherboard.

If you want cool, build yourself a vacuum tube headphone amp or something.
 
Yep, and the power transformers necessary for tubes are a bit daunting for those used to low voltage quipment. My tube equipment runs plate voltages of 350V - 565V. That's enough to kill you if you don't know what you are doing. Getting dead has a very low "cool" factor. ;)

oc
 
iddqd said:
Well, depends on the current.
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If it's driving a vacuum tube, it has enough current to seriously fuck you up. ;)

I've had more than enough bad experiences with guitar amplifiers to confirm this.
 
There are low-voltage tube designs out there - look at the one I linked.

edit: link to the design that was built on: http://headwize.com/ubb/showpage.php?fnum=3&tid=5395
I think low-voltage poweramps aren't really around [though theoretically, if you put enough in parallel...] , but if all you want them to do something functional, low-voltage is fine for preamps and headphone amps, there are plenty designs out there and several kits.

Bias: IMO, good headphones are much much easier to acquire than good speakers :p
 
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