Ritchie has outright said the outlane design on that game was a mistake. Some of the parts vendors sell an extended left outlane, and while I don't think it makes THAT much more of a difference (literally it's like MAYBE 2cm longer) some people swear by it. I've owned 2 STTNGs, I put it on both, but it never felt like it did much. The best thing you can do is simply not let the ball be in that area...if it's on the top of the slingshot, shove that thing upward with a good solid nudge and push it out of the corners.

Austin and Dallas both have great leagues and big communities, and Texas in general has some of the best competitive players around. Watch out for Colin.

I dunno about Austin, but lots of the Dallas people pay a local well-known tech. When it comes to solid state, I do all my own repairs. Pinside and Pinwiki ( http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/ ) and the willingness to actually learn basic electronics skills and proper soldering is really all you need 95% of the time....though if you have money to pay a tech (I never did lol) you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration occasionally.

Get a temperature controlled soldering iron, solder (NOT lead-free, ideally), a soldapullt (or an electric desoldering gun if you've got the scratch) , a multimeter, and some junk boards (Hell, if you come to Dallas at some point I've got a bunch of old trash boards that I haven't brought myself to throw away..) and just practice removing things cleanly and toning out traces with the continuity function. Protip, if you hold a circuit board up to a bright light, you can see the traces on both sides of the board at the same time.

What I use (Except the desoldering gun, but it's the one you'll see recommended a lot):

Soldering station - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANZRT4M/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_3.u8CbPQHMACN
Desoldering gun - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BFVFMS9/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_ncv8CbP29ZZ2P
Soldapullt - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K72SBWY/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_Aev8CbA947H42

Recommend finding a cheap used Fluke multimeter instead of buying new. I got mine secondhand from another local pinball guy like 6 years ago, and it's still running on the same batteries he was using that he said was almost dead... Basically, anything with changeable probes, and audible continuity testing is likely suitable for pinball. The 5$ multimeters at Harbor Freight...not so much, but they're fun to let your kid play around with when they won't leave the nice one alone.

I'll shoot you a PM. I need to get over to Cidercade, I actually haven't played Black Knight at all yet. +_+

+1 to that after owning two of them. They come off with a nut driver and all the coils are on quick connect molex....it's not anywhere near as bad to remove them as most people think, and they're usually so bloody dirty that even if you do all of the top, it'll be filthy again in no time flat if you don't do the subways. I can pretty much shop a STTNG blindfolded at this point, lol.... I'm going to end up owning it a THIRD time at some point, and I've got reproduction ramp set sitting in my closet waiting for it.

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.

Wouldn't be TOO sure about that....look at it this way.

Crap solder joints are prone to cracking and failure. If two ends of a crap solder blob like that are creating a short and it's cracked....move the machine and there's an intermittent connection. Could be caused by nudging or otherwise bumping the machine. Replacing the F110 fuse MIGHT have further broken where that solder blob was attached to, so that it's less likely to make connection, but it's still a poor job of repair, and you can see that .

That header needs to be repinned (the connector looks fine to me), and the solder blob cleaned up either way. It's something that would be about a 15 minute job for me (if I hadn't broken my soldapullt and not replaced it yet lol). I'm just not sure if those blobs are covering traces that burned, or what. If that was someone's attempt at a solder stitch, it's pretty ugly, but that's a tough job in an open spot, much less cramped like that. It's still repairable, though which is more than I can say for a lot of things!

Well, I've never had the luxury of a desoldering gun because I'm a consummate cheapskate. I did one of those Williams ASICs with like 80 pins with the soldapullt...but I wouldn't want to repeat it. I'm trying to convince myself I need the gun, but with only Joker Poker and Crescendo in the house, it's a really hard sell.

I'll also vouch for him.