The invention belongs the technical field of test. A deuterium lamp and a halogen tungsten lamp are adopted as standard light sources, and the starting time of a hollow cathode lamp is determined according to the response signal change of a silicon photocell through comparing the signal responses of the characteristic wavelength of the hollow cathode lamp and a background wavelength and determining the radiation intensity and the background noise of the hollow cathode lamp. A hollow cathode lamp test device involved in the invention is formed by a light source system, a monochromator system, detectors and a data processing system, a cone pulley disc (2) in the light source system is symmetrically provided with a deuterium lamp standard light source (3) and a halogen tungsten lamp standard light source (4), the coaxial space circumference is provided with n hollow cathode light sources, and is between 2 and 8; and silicon photocell detectors (9) are fixed at the opposite sides of the cone pulley disc and on the standard light source and hollow cathode lamp distributed space circumference. The device traces the magnitude of the standard hollow cathode lamp in an atomic absorption spectrophotometer to the standard light sources, has the advantages of stable magnitude and fastness and convenience in use, and is suitable for testing the starting time, the radiation intensity and the stability of the hollow cathode lamp, the background noise and other technologic parameters.