Yeah, I hope it's 120v or is multitap and thus easy to switch over to 120v for obvious reasons. 240v might not be too bad as my godfather has a woodworking shop so I imagine some of the tools are 240v...so I should have easy access at least in theory through a dryer/range outlet or at least hotwiring into a breaker panel to test. Didn't you once test a fixture by wiring a fixture to 120v like normal, then wiring another hot from the other side of the outlet or something like that?
His shop is at their house so in a residential area so I doubt they have 3-phase (208v, 277v, and much less likely 480v). If it's one of those voltages I may just disconnect the ballast (but leave everything in place, just disconnected but not really messed with otherwise, left in place and ready to go) and wire the socket directly to the mains, except for maybe the PC socket inline, for 120v so I can use a large mogul-base CFL or something. It'll be dim and the optics will be less than ideal but I'll be able to say I have a working cobrahead. Or I might remote-ballast it to 175w MV. I have a yardblaster that could use a lot of help I might just scrap for the ballast and PC socket and remote ballast it that way. But that stuff will be in Alaska, I'll be in California, you get the idea. But I have lots of junk still in storage at their place and another family friend's place, so it shouldn't be a problem keeping it there. Stuff like the cobra and the rocking chair that's been in my family for five generations isn't easy to ship and I refuse to ship the chair without me...most likely it will go to Alaska, if it does at all, in the bed of a Deuce or 5 ton Army surplus truck during a road trip. (One crazy idea my potential roommate and I have had is a road trip in a few years from Hays, Kansas to Fairbanks, Alaska, stopping in the Atascadero, California area since we both have connections there. (I will email you later and tell you the whole story, it's the one I promised I'd tell you)
The M-400A might sit at their place for awhile even if I get it working, at this point I'll be living in the dorms at college and I don't want to ship a heavy cobrahead up there unless I have no other choice...it'll be expensive to ship from Templeton, California to Fairbanks, Alaska. Although if either my dad and I or someone else I coincidentally ran into who knows the same places I do (no joke, they're from Kansas but know Alaska well and will be exchanging up there and maybe doing grad school in Fairbanks) get a house together I'd install it there. Or somehow it'll make it all the way out to my current house in Port Alexander and get put up here. That's even less likely since I won't be spending much time here for the near future after I move in a couple weeks. (I'll be keeping the house though, but not living here full time again, at least not for a few years).