"Meat Plow" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 18:56:38 -0000, "ian field"
wrote:


"Meat Plow" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 17:53:16 -0000, "ian field"
wrote:


wrote in message
...
I only two of them in my house.One in my kitchen and the other one in
my
bathroom, I never turn them off.Just now I was in my kitchen getting
me
a ''cold one''.That flourscent light bulb blipped a couple of
times.What
does that suppose to mean?
cuhulin


Maybe a "brown-out" on the power line?

The one I leave on 24/7 usually conspires to fail when I'm out. Common
failure modes are the tube or the mains in reservoir electrolytic,
typically
they start flickering or just go "phutt".


Back in 2003 I saw a 13 watt Osram CFL end its life in bursts of
sparks and smoke through a hole melted in the side of the ballast
container. I called Sylvania/Osram and they offered a replacement free
of charge. I told them no thanks I prefer to not have my home burn
down if another one of these failed while I wasn't present to
disconnect its power source. That scared me away from CFLs for a long
time.

The only one I ever saw do that was one I'd fitted bigger transistors in
an
attempt to use it as an electronic ballast in a 6' strip light - it even
worked for a few days before blowing up.


I used to love to experiment like that.

MOSFETs work better but you have to increase the turns on the feedback
toroid dual secondaries to feed the higher VGSthr.