Hanafi Tanudjaja wrote:

> In my local market,there is like neon tube lamp with blue/violet in
> color.  People ussually used this lamp to differentiat between fake
> and original money.  Is this germicidal lamp?

  Nope.  It has a glass tube and a violet coating, both of which
completely attenuate the short-wave UV-C radiation necessary to erase
EPROMs.

  I don't know if it is the same as that to which you refer, but I have
a couple of these palm-size "Money Detector" units.  They're quite cute,
using a 1¸" or so cold-cathode UV-A tube and a power converter from two
penlite cells which take up most of the case.

  While UV-A is a bit of a novelty, at this level that's about all it
is, and the firm selling these cheap uses the modules as the basis for
a much more intereting project; a Geiger counter.  I used one for the
case for a laser, though the laser module seems to have degraded.  I
[OT] wonder what experience others have had with longevity of these
lasers?
-- 
  Cheers,
        Paul B.