You've seen be grumbling because T8s will not work with quickstart control gear. I've tried sticking earthed foil to the tubes and then earthed wires wrapped around them with no or very limited success. I established quite some time ago that both quickstart and semi-resonant ballasts can be wired to make a switchstart circuit, the only trouble is it requires a rewire of the fitting and the quickstart/semi-resonant start functionality is lost.
It come to me last night, if only I could somehow provide some sort of kick to get T8s working then there'd be no problem. I thought about some possible ways of doing this, the one that seemed most likely to work is to wire a glow bottle between the live output and the neutral on the ballast. I hoped that the quickstart transformers would first heat the cathodes before the starter closes and that the starter would open before the cathodes cool down again. I tried it tonight with great success!
I've added a starter holder into my 4ft 40W Thorn Popular Pack with quickstart gear, it's only loose in there because I don't want to make permanent modifications to the fitting. When you put a T12 in there it starts as you'd expect and when you use a T8 it glows at the cathodes for a second before the starter kicks in and the tube starts. Not a perfect solution but it works!
The Popular Pack used originally had a starter holder in it, I removed it when I converted it to quickstart. I know I've got it somewhere so when I find it I'll put it back in and make this a permanent modification.
Youtube video of it working here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3LdOP-jocY