An Old-School Counter and Digital Dial
Afew years ago, a friend gave me a half-dozen early LED displays, and they cried out to be used in a frequency counter and digital dial for single-conversion receivers (they were very specific). And so they were, as Photo A illustrates. To be consistent with the displays’ age (a little more than 50 years), the unit uses discrete logic rather than a microprocessor. This article describes the resulting project, beginning with the displays themselves.
The Displays
The Hewlett-Packard Journal for February 1969, described the HP 5082-7000 Numerical Indicator as “a small, lowpower, all-semiconductor module which accepts four-line binary-decimal-coded input signals,” (more about those signals later), “and displays the corresponding digit, 0 through 9, as an array of brightly glowing red dots.”1
The red dots are produced by 28 light-emitting diodes, 27 of which form a rectangular array and one more for a left decimal point. Photo B, taken from the article, shows their arrangement. The square above the LEDs is the circuitry that drives them. The units are compatible with TTL (transistortransistor logic). They require +5 volts for power and about +4 volts for the LEDs. The displayed digits are 1/4-inch high.
Digital Dials
A digital dial for a single-conversion
