Saw this on ebay and was wondering if it's pulse start or not, it seems older, does anyone know?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267042308170

Just some regular ballasts. And if there is any of those GE programs start ballast in the bunch I will gladly take those instead of instant start ballast

I'm not surprised...he hadn't been very active lately.
Dave if you're reading this, I wish you'd have stayed.

Silverliner left.

Thanks for letting me know not to disconnect the multimeter while measuring the lamp current. As for cooling, I'll limit the setup to short runs. I will also use this rectifier because of the higher voltage rating. See here: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/smc-diode-solutions/KMB220S/7898347. It is also based on Schottky diodes.

Recently I was in London travelling on the S7 stock of the London Underground. These trains use rows of 1450mm T5 lamps to light the carriage interior.
Now these are quite long lamps and the fittings they are in have clear plastic clips securing the middle of the lamp but I noticed that several of them had missing or broken clips and over certain sections of track, the vibration of the train was causing the lamps themselves to vibrate and I reckon I could see at least 30mm of deflection in the middle!
So anyway my question is this, are fluorescent lamps tested under rough conditions like this and just how much can they take before shattering?
Seeing a glass tube flexing like that was quite interesting shall we say!

I was wondering what would happen if you gave a multimeter in the DC a super bumpy DC. The cap will definitely be helpful.

Multimeters use double slope integration AD conversion with relatively long times so are insensitive to the AC component on DC ranges. Some modern ones are using a sigma-delta AD with a digital decimation afterwards, which is generally a modern equivalent of good old integrating ADC.

But you never know how many corners are cut in a cheap design)

Again, do not leave the ampermeter load in this circuit disconnected even momentarily as this will fry the diodes and blow the capacitor. You may add a safety bypass of some kind (like ~5 pieces of 1N4007 diodes in series) if you can't be sure.

Yes, this bridge will work, though you should be careful with modern SMD parts as they get their cooling through the board mounting and when used in volume mount 'rat nest' circuit the cooling may be not adequate. Here the load is about 1/7 of max specified for the part, so you decide...

Also, it may be good to add an electrolytic capacitor to the circuit (any practical voltage you have on hand). Normally, a meter should suppress this, but some cheap ones may go mad about a little remaining HF in the DC current measured, why take a chance?

Would using this full bridge rectifier work? It's a Schottky-based type, so the recovery time should be really low.https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bourns-inc/CD-HD201/6561443

Update: @RRK and @James: The thin arc of my lamp became unstable. It sometimes slightly moving and flickering. I can't capture this with my camera, because the tracklight must point down to ensure the tip at the top. I doubt if the arctube have cesium at all.