(ACTUAL QUESTION IS AT THE BOTTOM)
I am a beginner in electronics and am learning more day-by-day to my best. I first got interested in Nixie tubes a few years back, so those are what I play around with, as they sparkef my curiosity.
I have been using this circuit I came up with:
And it has been working fine; all five 74141's I have had been working until late.
But I have found that, for some reason, when I had started using some new breadboard I had bought, that, suddenly, the circuit did not work. I removed it all and put it back together on my old breadboard and found that it did the same; all of the digits would be lit up at the same time save for one or two and would barely flicker. I did not think to swap out the 74141 for some of the other ones I havhavbut instead I decided to swap the tube for some LED's as I have before done using the same layout; all of the anodes connected together, sharing one common resistor:
It was at this point I saw that a handful of the LED's barely lit, others cycled through my test program, but LED #6, on pin 10 of the 74141 stayed on no matter what. Frustrated, I undid the entire circuit and redid it still the same thing. I have no idea why, but I decided to swap out the 74141 for another; it works perfectly; testing both multiplexing and just normal half-second cycle through, as should be expected.
QUESTION:
Exposition out of the way, IS THERE ANY WAY I COULD HAVE DAMAGED IT WITH MY CIRCUIT? Or perhaps just something random with the IC itself; it's not old (it's datecode is 1540--fortieth week of the 2015.) Some are still producing the K155ID1 in Russia for some reason. Perhaps dropping it? Or accidentally swapping the VCC and GND for it?
