Yeah, the HO strip was pretty mangled. Admittedly some of the mangling on both came from a certain idiot thinking he could extract the ballasts by bending the fixture to release the notch they're held in at. It didn't work, next time I'm going with a screwdriver! I did ask fellow LG member 'Icefoglights' who lives around here if he had any interest in a couple kinda mangled 8 footers as restoration projects (I would have happily properly unbent, cleaned up, gotten new lamp holders, found channel covers, etc) but no, no need for them. So the HO strip gets scrapped I think. Probably bend it in half and throw it in the dumpster LOL.
Slimline...I might keep it until I move out, I can at least use it as major indirect light above a set of 8 foot long shelves here, if I can find some free tubes. (When I move again in May, the lamps would just go back to the transfer station, and the fixture channel would too, but ballast extracted). Haven't yet tested it since I have no way of doing so but I really have no doubt...LOL.
I did manage to test the HO ballast though. I used a single F32T8 between the red and blue leads, LOL! It does work, and instant starts sorta violently with such a lamp, but works fine, and not overly bright either, surprisingly. I had to test with a pair of craptastic push in tombstone lamp holders that came with a lot of Craigslist F32T8s I got, that were removed in favor of LED tubes. So I couldn't test with two lamps, since the sockets were shunted (needed more "spaces" to get sockets on the yellow-wire side of the ballast) but I'm satisfied it works.