Welcome TenderTilt. Glad to have you here on Pinside.

There is a ladies thread here on Pinside Forum that you may want to check out, though it is not very active lately.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinside-girls-club/page/6

Several of us Louisiana pinball fanatics make it over to Texas for events such as:
* Houston Arcade and Pinball Expo (mid Nov)
http://www.arcadecenter.com/
* TPF (March)
* some of the Gulf Coast Pinball Club tournaments in Beaumont, TX, (1 in Spring, and 1 in Fall)

Here is a regional thread that we post in and keep up with what is going on down around here.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gulf-coast-pinball-club-se-texas-sw-louisiana

First off Welcome! Ive been in the hobby for 11 years. It started when my daughter asked for a pinball machine instead of a custom arcade I built her. I bought Wwf Royal Rumble the first machine I could afford and brought it home. Half of the mechanisms didnt work and the gi was out. I searched the internet and found Pinside! Ive learned how to fix/restore pins from all the awesome pinsiders to now being in a league to helping others with our crazy hobby! You will meet some wonderful human beings that share your same passion. It is always cool to read about someone new to our little hobby. You live in a great State to offer you support and there are all of us to help you with fixing, restoring, understanding rules, where to buy parts ect ect. Sometimes it can be a frustrating hobby however I still think iits the best ive ever been apart of.
Harley D.

Welcome

None of your business dude.

Welcome . The restoration threads here are cool , provide some great info and it is nice to see the amount of work people put into their games to make them really nice . Star Trek the Next Generation is Awesome!

You do know if it was JJP machines that'd be like nearly.......ONE machine.

I think you have a great mix and very awesome when any person is brave enough to tackle shopping a pin. Personally STNG still scares me. It's great to see new people in the hobby and be invested in doing their own repairs and learn. It definitely saves a lot once you get to your size collection. Your off to a great start. It's so great to wake up and see your pins or just turn them all on and sit back in the amazement that this is your life.

Oh and thanks for helping fund this crazy place with your donation.

Did you go the easy route and change them from the bottom like I did? If not. Then you got this.

STTNG can be kind of a beast. At least repair wise. I'm sure shopping it out isn't much easier. Don't stress about it though as there's plenty of people around the area who can help you out. Just might cost you some play time on your black knight though.

The old silver ball isn't treating me so kind today but it sure is fun to try.

More pics of TenderTilt hanging out with Pinsiders.
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welcome, have fun!

Been to texas a few times, some great places to play like cidercade in dallas.

For your gameplay improving, one thing that helped me was repeating shots.. for one game ignore the rules of your pin and just hit a certain thing over and over. Hit the target/ramp, gain control, trap the ball, then hit it again and again. When you feel you can hit it as you please move on to another target. Should help a lot with accuracy and control. Good luck

STTNG is a machine I had a love hate relationship with. The hate won and I moved it on for a STLE. Both great games but those side drains just killed it for me. Welcome and hope you enjoy. I have found everyone to be very obliging as a newbie and that continues through to today. I even get asked for advice nowadays. Nice to be able to give back. Your gender shouldn’t matter TheTenderTilt it’s all about our mutual obsession and love for the silver ball. My obsession has been bugging me for 51 years now and I still love it. Cheers Scott

Welcome! Your handle is quite poetic! I wish I’d put more effort into mine when I joined Pinside. Mine simply reflects the name of the main arcade I frequented growing up.

I put a lot of quarters into pinball machines before the age of 16. Then practically none until about 10 years ago. My sister got me back into it. She said “you have to play Lord of the Rings”. I did, fell back in love, bought an LoTR (from Jersey Jack in fact) and have bought/sold probably 15 games since. I truly love pinball. I have some local friends with good collections plus some killer places to play on location about an hour away. In fact, I just played quite a bit of BK SoR last week, and I totally agree that the sound and vision package is outstanding!

Glad you’re here.

TheTenderTilt welcome to pinside! I hope you have fun in the forums and have fun playing pinball. I’m guilty of spending more time on pinside than actually playing pinball. I love the hobby- so much fun with friends and family

That's a nice lineup. I had my STTNG for over 8 years. It's certainly one of my all time favorite games. I recommend saving a few bucks and getting the color display. It takes it to a new level. The problem with orange dots in that the images just become muddied together and you don't realize how much you're missing until you see it in color. It's a complicated game, but every issue you may encounter with it, is going to be detailed on this site...somewhere. Or just start a thread and you'll find many here are great at tossing in their knowledge help fellow pinheads.

Welcome aboard!

My 17 year old daughter would have kittens if I swapped out the retro bmw style orange dmd fo a color one.

Hopefully you put in non ghosting leds in your sttng. Now you need the herg pulse modulator controller boards to give them the analog on off effect and eliminate strobing. Add a subwoofer and bam.

When you eventually run into a repair you need a pro to handle call Brandon at Oldies But Goodies. I don't know if he'll come all the way to Killeen but he's a big supporter of TPF and posts here as Big70

In regards to STTNG I added a shaker motor to mine and it took it to a whole new level.

Heck I thought the title meant one of us had a new baby. Was chiming in to say congratulations. But wow was I wrong.
Anyway. Welcome to the hobby.

I've never heard of that. I can only say for certain, that mine was running the latest code, and it had the shuttle mode (I'm assuming you are referring to the video mode). You would ideally want to run the latest code anyway, as it would give you all the available bug fixes and enchacements for the game.

LOTR is a great game all around had two over the years will buy again

You'll need a rom burner or know someone who has one who can burn the rom for you for STTNG. I've got a burner and I may even have spare EEPROMs of the right size for STTNG but I'd have to check.

I'd say you have a decent chance at being on the latest version though if you haven't checked.

Hmmm. I would check to make sure your fuses are the exact spec in each slot. And then check the GI connectors on your board and inspect for toasted crispiness. I bet they are toasted brown to near black. (Lower left part of the board).

If so, mark all the connector numbers with a sharpie, remove the board, and rebuild the two GI connectors with Molex style. May be overkill now that you don’t have the incandescent draw, but probably a good idea.

J121

I think I know what you're referring to.

The Comedy Roms that they did for the cast have a lot of goofy lines in them. If it defaults to Riker's Poker instead of Shuttle.... Color DMD may not be compatible with that ROM set if that's the case. Really, you're not missing a lot there. I had them, I didn't like them for long term use. They're funny for a few hours, but not at the 60 bucks or whatever, and having to get in there and swap them out.

http://shop.colordmd.com/colordmd-replacement-display-for-star-trek-the-next-generation-pinball-machine/

Official page says LX-7 English is the compatible set, but the comedy roms are....also LX-7, so maybe email them if you're planning on using those. Otherwise if you're running LX-7 vanilla....perfectly fine.

GI on that game pulls a ton. And repinning the connector should go along with repinning the board. It's not...super difficult, but definitely needs the correct tools, contacts (Molex Trifurcon .156 pins and headers) and someone with a bit of soldering experience. Even those of us that have done it a bunch can make stupid mistakes.

The last time I got fed up working with a big header, someone recommended to cut the plastic with my wire cutters...seemed like a good idea until I realized it had pulled up a through hole along with it anyways when the crunching plastic apparently torqued the pin enough with a half broken solder joint to loosen the old pad....which then came out easily with the pin. >_< Thankfully, I can solder stitch most through holes with reasonable size traces (IE: Not Williams WPC Switch Matrix!), but man that ticked me off.

Fuses blowing though....could be a lot of things. An intermittent short on one of the lamp circuits (which should still blow the fuse even with LEDs), cracked solder joints on the bridge rectifiers, or rectifiers themselves dying by internal short. It's more likely to be a loose wire somewhere along the sockets, or cracked solder joints, than the BRs just being BAD, given the intermittent nature. You'd definitely know if a BR was fully dead....things just don't even work at all at that point, even if you replace the fuse.

Cool, just have someone reflash them and you'll be good to go, minus your high scores.

And just remember we all basically started out scared. Well at least I did. Now I fix everything myself and even do board work. Just like pins you will start to collect tools and some parts. Of coarse after ordering then adding another order because you missed something. It's comical and all part of the journey.

Cidercade and BOS pinball lounge are my favorites. BOS is owned by a pinside moderator, and ge has aot of machines from every era. The multiple freeplay barcades, regeneration, and pinstack are amongst some of the other good choices for for pins.

You are in Killeen though, right? The 3 pinballz locations are killer. I just wish they kept better overall care of the pins
If you get over to san antonio...Whats brewing is the place to go.