I can almost guarantee you that an electronic ballast will produce a slightly different colour of light than a pulse start ballast with the same bulbs. You'll also get different electrical draws and different PAR values (the electronic will be less on both fronts).
You can repair a pulse start ballast depending on what has gone wrong. It is usually the capacitor and it is easy to diagnose a bad capacitor by simply removing the ballast cover and looking at the cylindrical object that looks like a big battery. If it's all blacked and burnt then it's fried. Another common pulse ballast is is the igniter dying. This also should be fairly easy to replace. PFO ballasts are simply a collection of other manufacturer's parts so it should be fairly easy to source parts even though PFO is now defunct. The issue will be labour cost. If you are a handy electrical person or know someone who is, then repair may be worth it. However, if you aren't then it might be cheaper simply to buy a new ballast.
I use a 175W Vertex ballast and it's fine. All electronic ballasts are pretty much "black boxes" with little you can do to repair if something goes wrong, but electronics are generally quite reliable because they don't have very many parts to break down. Electronics also use less wattage, are smaller and quieter than a magnetic ballast like a pulse, but again, won't give you as much PAR.
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