Club license plate frames.
Mild...
61BD6B66-17A0-488F-9919-B11B6DF6EDE0 (resized).jpeg
And Spicy...
E503FE8C-3A7B-4D63-821F-62233C1D3E83 (resized).jpeg

Nope, Alltek free play is only for the Bally games.
Classic Stern gets the high hard one when it comes to the free play setting O-Dizzle.

Yes, Nvram.weebly.com is a much better choice if you need a new MPU board and want to use the new or homebrew ROMs for your classic Bally/Sterns and not want to rely on what was already coded in the Alltek board.
Cheaper to boot too!

Yes, I did dern pushem ‘dem buttuns on dat dern Stdars.

Technically speaking your wiring looks fine to that switch (pending continuity check on wire of course) so I’d start moving back to the board and check the wire associated in the molex connector and any cold soldering joint to those pins on the board.

Now on to the medium ramble for other visitors:

More often than not, a reflow of ALL header pins on EVERY board is a good habit to get into when purchasing these old solid states.
(New caps don’t hurt either.)

I’m guessing your game doesn’t desertT1 due to the free play comment but, if it also has the old battery still attached, clip it off, neutralize any acid that might have leaked and inspect board for any further damage due to the dead battery.
Good replacements:
Cheap.
1. a SuperCap memory capacitor rated at 1 or 1.5 Farads.
Not so cheap.
2. The 5101 NVRAM replacement that Rob Anthony sells here: http://www.lockwhenlit.com/products.htm

I’ve also seen some .100 connectors where each hole was completely filled with aqua green “goop” due to the expired battery.
Not too good when you’re trying to make a solid electrical connection.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, factory one should look more like this...
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But your stack is missing a dummy tab, hence the floating wire.

I can’t speak for most Stars owners but, I went ahead and shaved off all the extra bits and pieces from the new repro targets and made them look and behave like the old targets did. (Switching green to blue of course...)

No bricks; easy glancing occasional side sweeps can be done too without a hangup.
No accidental drops or vibration related problems either.
Just takes a bit of time to match all the dimensions from the old targets.

Only downside from my PBR batch order was, the red stars were printed slightly lower than the blue ones. Other than that, they’ve been holding strong many MANY games later since I installed them, back in 2013.

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Xacto to flush chop the big stuff and fine scalpel to trim any other imperfections.

No way José.
Not that anal to want to correct such a silly thing like that.
Less friction/force to drop sans decal too.