Upon deciding to undertake this project my first step was to take stock of what parts I have available and what I need to acquire. 

I didn’t have any nixie tubes, so they had to be ordered. I settled on six IN12B numeric tubes, six IN1 numeric tubes and 20 INS1 indicators. All the nixie’s were new old stock components manufactured in the USSR and were ordered off of an ebay seller that I have purchased from in the past “alexer1” and came from the Ukraine. I already had about 20 or so K155ID1 driver ICs, the Soviet equivalent of the SN7441, which I had acquired as part of a bulk lot of surplus New Zealand Defense Force electronic components. Incidentally, why did the NZDF have Soviet spare parts? A quick dig through my box of logic IC’s suggests that most if not all of the required IC’s were present. Passive components were not an issue either with a large range in stock. Once the nixie’s arrived the first step would be to establish a high voltage test bed.