Yes they are, probably on the older side of instant start too. Yeah I just noticed if you look near the top of that socket there does seem to be another wire wrapped in something going to it, how interesting! The sockets originally tricked me into thinking these used to be F40. The bottom one was starting to get a little old though (and its lamp from 1998 was too), it had a gentle flicker sometimes to it. But these could run a long time flickering for a little bit.

Very interesting read and history 👍, thanks for posting 😎

Yeah, those are curious lamp holders.  Are these instant start?  It's probably a non-shunted socket using that wire as a jumper to shunt the contacts.

Ahh, I remember that now. It's such a shame they're not around anymore.

Also side-note, what is going on with the wiring in the bottom picture, why is the middle socket wired to itself? And the side wire holes also seem to be slightly uncommon.

I wouldn't be surprised if these have old electronic ballasts in them since it was still the first generation of ballasts.

The (E) stuck around until 2012.  I'm also surprised to see a non-Alto typical 741 lamp that late.  Usually it was the specialty phosphors that continued to be full-mercury.

Yup, it was indeed 72 watts! This ballast doesn't really have a good PF at all but I don't know why it jumps in power when a lamp is taken out.

Are you sure it's 72 watts and not 72 volt-amperes?  If it's truly 72W then the current would be around 2A at that power factor.  If it's 72VA that'd be more like 0.6A and 22W.

I do and I measured it: The F40 line current is 0.60a and the F34 line current is 0.58a. Based on the fact that the ballast doesn't get super hot compared to other ballasts (being ran at full power), it seems happy!

I can't really tell if it's HPF, or NPF. It lists on the label a PF of 0.88 probably at full power, but at about the 60% I keep it at, it has a pretty poor power factor of 0.62.

Also interestingly, when you take out one lamp, its power consumption jumps! At around 60%, it draws 42 watts, but when I take out one lamp it jumps to 72 watts and the PF drops to 0.30.

Nice

I checked the power ratings on my dimming ballast to see if F34s raise its power consumption at all.

Hm, it's possible I read the code wrong even though I'm pretty sure I didn't. Unfortunately all these lights are dust now.

I didn't know the ePact marking lasted so long though, and I didn't know they made F32T8 non-Altos so late.