Ralph Mowery wrote:
"Way Back Jack" wrote in message
...
The fluorescent tubes in the laundry room fail to illuminate properly
and the diagnoses here is defective ballast.

I always thought that the "ballast" is part of the tube / bulb but
apparently it's part of the fixture.

So, I guess that in 2010 when we have to use fluorescent bulbs
throughout the house, we will need to buy new table lamps, ceiling
lights, etc. Is that right?

Usually the long tubes that have a pin or 2 pins on each end go into a
fixture that will have a ballast in the fixture. Most fixtures (but not
all) will have one ballast for two tubes. That is if you have one tube,
there will be one ballast for that tube, if there are 2 tubes, there will
still be one ballast. If you have 4 tubes in a fixture most of the time it
will have 2 ballasts. The old ones are iron wrapped with wire like a
transfromer. Very heavy for the size. The newer ones may be electronic and
do not weigh very much.

The bulbs (tubes) that go into your table lamp and such that replace the
bulbs with filiments have a form of ballast built into the base of the bulb.
That is you just unscrew the old bulb and screw in the new one in your table
lamp and all is well. Same for any filiment type bulb. No differance to the
user.
It's too bad we went down this path.
Right now we throw away perfectly
good "ballasts" with every CFL. Some of
the early CFL-like lamps had
an electronic ballast which you keep,
just replacing the lamp part. Kind
of like the circular fluorescents and
the long tubes.