You see the black rubber ring stretched across the 4 posts (5 in your pic, looks like it goes around the back one)?
Put an additional rubber ring stretched across those posts UNDERNEATH where your current one is. In most cases, it does not interfere with the drops dropping, but it helps prevent a ball from sitting where you have it sitting in your pic. It also prevents balls from going under plastics, but that's not the issue in your case since there's more posts there.

They need to sit a bit proud from the playfield when they are DOWN. This way there's a little bit of a ramp on the drop so the ball tends to not sit there.

Some people have gone to extremes on games and added a piece of wood in between the drops so the ball can't catch there either; I wouldn't do that solution.

Nope just as annoying with incandescent.

Your drop finger is worn, or the plate that stops the fingers from going too far is. Take a look at the reset plunger and coil stop as well, if they are worn it will pull the targets too high. If it happens very rarely that sort of just happens... but more often look for wear.

Yes, if you hit it correctly. If you already have a couple of the drops down though you might not get enough mustard on the shot to get more.

http://www.pinball4you.ch/okaegi/pro_soft.html

Possibly pinball universe as well

The home rom can be coin play iirc. Maybe it laughs when you have it set to require multiple coins?
Flash Gordon laughs are you thinking of that?

Still samples but way smaller in size and thus quality afaik. Gottlieb and stern speech boards are synthesis.

You can do a /10 romset to make it effectively 8 digit scoring.

That's doesn't look like the right one if it's a cabinet switch that's the one for the flipper mech itself. I think Sheev_Palpatine showed his in the cab.

Welcome to Bally Bricking. Ideas are being worked on to help with this.

Start game, knock down the O. Wait a couple seconds. Knock down anything other than the R.... should laugh.

You need the feed wire (it's not ground). It's usually bare wire on drop banks but it's ok the way it's wired. The pics without the wire I don't see how that will work at all. The tab should NOT touch the other tab with the diode, there are 3 tabs on the switch, none should touch any other one. Just wires on 2, and the diode on one and the odd tab out that doesn't have a wire.

Just get an nvram and pop it into the 5101 slot. The batteries that originally came installed on Bally/Stern boards from this era is a NiCad. If you replace with regular batteries you have to install a blocking diode so they don't get charged (see pinwiki.com in the bally section for complete options for this)

You shouldn't have to do this you should be able to fix that one target either sand it a little or adjust the spring tension. Later inline drops have an adjustable foot too to tweak the height too but that also affects the reset stroke.

You can swap a test rom in that will show all closed switches instead of just the lowest numbered one. It's on pinwiki

It's also in the weebly multi ROM on that board

bally games do not use a lamp matrix. The bare wire is the voltage wire running from lamp to lamp. The single wire is what the driver board grounds.

The pinwiki bally section is one of the most complete on the site check it out for basics and specifics.

Only if you set replays to payout extra balls.