Ballast testing for 5R / 7R beam

[partyanimallighting]

Hey all, I'm looking for some basic feedback on 5R beams. I'm trying to recycle a couple of old Beam units (Chinese no less) that had faulty power supplies. These units are really basic and I've fiddled around with a variety of different models in the past and it's basically a power supply, ballast, display, mainboard and lamp and of course, some builds are better than others. My basic knowledge from past experience is that if there's no lamp strike, check the 380VDC into the ballast. If that's fine, check lamp wires and thermo. If those are fine, then it's either lamp or ballast. Swap out the lamp. If there's still no strike, change the ballast. My first question is ~ Is this standard modus operandi? Is this what everyone does? Anyway, back to the problem at hand. I got new power supplies and started the swap-out and I tested without the ballast connected and both units started up fine and functioned via DMX (noisy and dusty yes, but functional). However.....when I connected the first ballast and lamp harness, the power supply blew out, not violently, just the fuse blew out. I tore apart the power supply and bridged the fuse with a single strand wire and that blew out on power up, so there's some damage further along in this power supply. Now, my second question is ~ I DO NOT want to risk the other new power supply so I'm seeking some advice as to how I can go about testing this ballast and the ballast in the other unit and also any ballasts in the future without any further blowouts. I do have single output 380VDC power supplies available but I do not want to put these at risk either. And the third question ~ when I was running the original test to strike the lamp, I "forgot" to connect the 5 wire harness from the display to the ballast. This harness feeds to the display and I believe it sends a signal to the display upon lamp strike (most of the displays on start up state, "waiting on lamp strike" with a counter) so the fixture can start it's RESET process. Would my omitting to connect this harness cause the blowout of the power supply? This I doubt because it would be the same scenario as having a bad lamp or ballast but I'm befuddled as it is plus I'm out one brand new power supply. You guys have always been so helpful in the past and some or any advice for future reference would be greatly appreciated.