I don't own a Sylvania ballast...?   You're thinking of one of the other F30T12 strip lights I was able to choose from. Mine has a rotten label, but it was identified by another member as a CGE ballast. OCV is around 250V, by my measurements. It's hard to measure because as soon you turn it on without a lamp the capacitor charges up and the OCV drops to 0.

Hmmm... I was looking at this one.....

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-77629

I'm actually thinking of getting one off eBay.

Which ballast were you referring to?

Yeah, I took that picture at school, where the fixture resides.  My ballast can be seen here.

Ah yes....the toasty looking one! Anyway, you also mentioned that "without a lamp the capacitor charges up and the OCV drops to 0". Being AC, the cap doesn't behave like on DC. The OCV should easily be read across the output all day long. I was just wondering what you meant by that?

Oh right, I was thinking in DC.  Well, as soon as you turn it on with no lamp, you quickly get a reading of the full OCV (250 volts is the highest I've gotten so far), but within 2 or 3 seconds it quickly drops down to, like, 10 volts, and it stays there indefinitely.

Wow...sounds like a faulty ballast! I've never seen the OCV drop like that though.

Well, it works absolutely perfect, and always has, so who knows.