WOW look at the first lamps on this video! Pause it at about 22 seconds!  never seen a fluoro tube die that way! orange half way up the tube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPXtLpmN9_8

WOW look at the first lamps on this video! Pause it at about 22 seconds!  never seen a fluoro tube die that way! orange half way up the tube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPXtLpmN9_8

That is a preheat fixture.  The starters are right under the lamps on the right side.  Never seen a preheater do that!

It was a preheater in the past. According to the description, there is an electronic F32T8 ballast in there and the starters are just dummy starters with a shorting wire to close the circuit. Cool concept though. Electronic instant start ballasts are great for cooking old lamps.

I bet this is not a chinese low quality "instant start" ballast. This is a real instant start "Slimline" electronic ballast designed for fluorescent lamps having one pin. Because only slimline ballast can cause dying or dead lamps to do that strange things. Also there is a difference between slimline an low quality chinese "instant start" ballasts: Slimlines don't heats the electrode at all not before, during and after the ignition and so the lamps designed to operate with it have a single pin. On the other hand low quality "instant start" electronic ballast designed for two pin lamps actually heats the electrodes after the lamp ignited to prevent overheating of the ballast so they can't ignite dead or dying lamps. By the way, i think the US electronic ballasts haven't any EOL protection or any means of ballast protection and they can't detect wrong lamps, especially the electronic slimline ballasts.

On new ballasts the protection is mandatory by the Code as the means of fire protection measure. Other interesting thing, one channel might serve max two lamps, so if one lamp die, max one another might be shut down together with the defective one, so one common inverter serving three or four lamps (e.g. in series) is not allowed anymore in new ballasts.

This is my video hehe!

To answer: Yes, it used to be a preheater but it got it converted to rapid start. Here's a pic of the fixture.

I am using not a slimline ballast but a crappy chinese F32T8 Tulamp electronic ballast that came from one of those cheap fixtures at HomeDepot. It works good on dead lamps and light them up 'til their last breath.

And yes, the starters are fake, I removed the tube in them and twisted the stems to get a close circuit.