You should become an electrician!

way to go bud.

I will I currently have what's known outside Québec as "Technical Vocational High School". It's a 1 800hrs. program where I learn wiring of various equipments: lighting, motors, relays, branch circuits. etc.

Cool! I'll hopefully be taking a vocational course called Residential Construction Repair and Remodeling, which is mainly carpentry, but there's some basic electrical work and plumbing taught too. Once of the rooms has a miss-out two lamp F40T12 RS fixture mounted vertically on the wall with EOL tubes. It's the only T12 i know of ont he entire campus (my high school and the Vocational School share the same lot of land so i'm speaking for the Votech building as well as my school itself). A few of the fixtures were retrofitted in the Votech building and the "E Building" but the main school has all new lights as well as some of the lights in the Votech and "E building".

The other lights in the room with the T12 are all six lamp T8 highbays, which likely replaced MH lowbays, which more than likely replaced mercs at one time or another. There are quite a few rooms that appear to have been originally HID in the Votech building. They all have six lamp T8 highbays with motion sensors now though.

I'm thinking of offering to relamp the T12 fixture but I'm wondering how the hell I'd bring a pair of four foot lamps to school without either breaking them or people seeing them and wondering what the hell I'm doing with a pair of "light sabers" lol. I suppose i could offer to retrofit it to T8 for extra-credit or soemthing during the electrical course lol. That'd give me a nice RS ballast, given it hasn't leaked from having EOL lamps (can that happen?) IIRC, onc lamp is totally out with heavy blackening on either end and the other lamp is orange at one electrode and dark the rest of the lamp.

The fixture itself seems totally useless, as the six lamp T8 fixtures would drown out any light it'd give off even if it had good lamps. i think i like my retrofit idea best. Heck, I wouldn't mind taking the whole thing home lol but the feed for the T8 highbays passes though that fixture (conduit on the top and bottom of the fixture going from the wall switch to the ceiling). I'd more than likely have to ask the custodian foreman if i want to retrofit it though and stay after school since technically the school owns the fixtures, not the teacher. I get OSHA Certified in 11th grade by taking the course too!

RS ballasts are not affected by dead/failing lamps, only preheat, trigger start, slimline and some LPF RS ballasts seem to be affected, and certain electronic ballasts
RS ballasts with an EOL lamp actually run cooler, and will work after decades of sitting with dead lamps, 34W lamps are the biggest killer to RS ballasts it seems

Well, that's what i was thinking. If the lamps are 34w and at EOL, could that affect the ballast?

possibly, because they have that electrically conductive coating on the outside of the bulb, they will do some flashing at EOL on RS sometimes, my aunt actually witnessed one fail and it just went out all the sudden, i then brought the lamp home, the cathode at the EOL end was fine, but really worn and it would only start on an electronic ballast, on RS it just did that dim partial discharge from both ends and not lit in the center

BTW the ballast was fine