Like posted in several places above, buy a good working machine from a collector who cares about his games. You'll start with the simple things, cleaning/waxing, changing rubbers and bulbs. Next will be replacing connectors and flipper rebuilds. Baby steps. Eventually board diagnosis and repair.

Even if you have to call a tech out for something beyond your ability (and there are several in Chicago), you're probably looking at about $175 for a 2 hour service call, unless something crazy like a total board replacement happens, which is very rare.

In 20+ years I've had maybe 3 or 4 house calls (the first 2 were pre-Pinside, damn near pre-Internet) and the last one or 2 were more through laziness than anything - nagging little issues on different games that I just wanted fixed for an upcoming party. So I've probably spent $600.00 on service calls in 2 decades, and I've had well over a dozen games for most of that time. Hovering around 20 the last 10 years.

Pinside, pinwiki, pinballninja, all of these are treasure troves of repair info.

P.S. T2 was my first DMD game, after a KISS and Space Invaders, and I still have it (and KISS) - great choice for a first game!