Final(?) little long update post: Machine's at the show now, pulled the 4 burnt coils and am replacing them early tomorrow morning and buying a replacement original MPU and possibly a driver board (sucks, mine is really great just needs a 40-pin connector) and I'm going to get that installed early too. All is well. I appreciate the support but looks like no loaner board for me. Going to try and not break the old EPROMs but they're very grimey so if anybody can burn me the two flippers ROMs and the game ROM for 1978 World Cup (all here, other dumps are incorrect: http://pinball.flippers.info/roms/wldcp_l1.zip I don't need the sound ROM burned anywhere, mine works) on 1 2716 chip each and can bring it that'd be amazing, otherwise I think I can make mine work. I can pay for that.
After this work, a lot of money, and many hours of driving, I should have a fully working machine and actually get to play it for the first time ever... shortly before everybody else gets a turn (how lame)! Kidding. So if you see it and it's working, give it a whirl. There's two there.
The bingo guys ("bingo" row is there, behind my game, wish there were more pins in the back for cool pictures but oh well, haha!) were messing with their transformers and kept tripping/shorting the power strip breaker machines of that general area shared in rapid succession and I had that little freak out moment where I ran to shut my machine off which was being powered on and off. Probably harmless, but it doesn't take long for me to get nice and attached to my games I guess. I could go into detail but basically mine's the one with the double instruction cards and the other one is not like that. (I got it like that and it didn't come with the pricing card.) Easy feature to point out and don't wanna make this too long.
Had that funny "leaving your kids at camp for the first time" worry anxiety feeling about an inanimate object on the way home on a small scale. No regrets. Just going to pin (no pun intended) that on this being my first show bringing something with me. Weird leaving it there but certainly fun and worth it.
Didn't want to be too specific but I decided on bringing my World Cup (one of two at the show, got coil identification from that machine lol), which I bought on Tuesday night non-working. It was totally naive of me to think I'd get the boards to fire up that quickly with a few little methods I'd read about (things in this hobby never go as planned but I was willing to take that dive) but in that little gap of time I've cleaned it, waxed it, cleaned the glass, replaced some bulbs, cleaned the side rails, put it on brand new casters at the show, installed a brand new lock at the show, and a bunch of other little things. Lots of getting up early and heading to bed late kind of days for this. Doing a lot of this just for the show but at the end of the weekend I'm going to walk out with an even nicer machine and that's pretty cool to think about too, I love putting as much effort into the hobby as I can. Anyways, thanks again everybody for the kind words, encouragement, and offers. Feel free to say hi at the show (Skinny tall kid with poofy afro-like dark brown hair.) and also as I said feel free to try out my machine, this work is so everybody can enjoy it for a while and not just me. If anybody wants to help me solder some coils on early tomorrow morning feel free.