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For those going what the fuck is bird on about, the circuit is a power supply. Normally you'd use a diode tube here, a device that conducts one way only so you can get DC. It chops off half of the AC line voltage, and you stick a capacitor on it to get something that looks like DC.

This circuit took a military RF triode, a tube used as an amplifier, and wired it to be a diode. Why? Probably because the triode was cheap after the war and they had millions of them.

For those going what the fuck is bird on about, the circuit is a power supply. Normally you'd use a diode tube here, a device that conducts one way only so you can get DC. It chops off half of the AC line voltage, and you stick a capacitor on it to get something that looks like DC. This circuit took a military RF triode, a tube used as an amplifier, and wired it to be a diode. Why? Probably because the triode was cheap after the war and they had millions of them.

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Saw a similar thing for a different reason in some of Shango's videos. Cheap Hong Kong solid state radios used to employ transistors as diodes to raise the count for the sticker. A 9 transistor radio is 33% better than a 6 transistor one.

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Yes, that was very common. Parallel transistors for the drivers and output (does nothing,) use a transistor for the detector, just do-nothing circuits full of transistors because morerer transistors are betterer.

This circuit was probably more of a cost savings situation. No need to buy a 50 cent 12AX4 and a slightly larger transformer when this 5 cent tube can be made to work.

[–] • 1 pt