I'm not home right now, but I think Mantis sells those hangers to cross reference -visually anyway.....those brass screws actually control the slide bar below it...if they're too tight, it won't allow it to slide easily...loosening them up will allow that slide to drop a bit to more easily "catch" the tabs in the lockdown bar.

Here are two https://mantispinball.com/pinball-parts/misc/misc-playfield-hanger-long/
and https://mantispinball.com/pinball-parts/misc/misc-playfield-hanger-short/

Exact same problem. Thought it was my sanity.
That's probably why WMS removed the domes... that and cost cutting.
Sadly; replacing the hangers - to me anyway- would alter the game in such a way to make it dubious to me.

Don't know what the right answer is honestly.

I did some measurements from the bottom of the rear of the cannon to the playfield and the left cannon sits barely over 1/16" higher than the right. I then put my level across the sides of the cabinet and saw the left side was about 1/16" lower than the right, despite the playfield being perfectly level.

I suspect with the ever so slight variations, it's adding up to that 1/8" difference in height.

I think the easiest solution that won't affect gameplay as much is to machine down the left cannon post by 3/16".

Are the domes held in place with the lock washers? If so, clip out the washers, remove dome, put a washer or 2 on the posts giving you your needed clearance and then hot glue the domes in.

Do it to both cannon covers for uniformity.

Have you guys looked at the positioning of the receiver bar that the lockdown bar rests on?...maybe loosen the screws holding it onto the cabinet and sort of drop it a bit...that should drop the playfield a tiny bit...maybe enough to get that glass on....

Unfortunately, not only does that look strange because it creates a gap at the base of the dome, but it doesn't provide enough clearance. That would've been too easy.

Yeah I was thinking along the same lines. One option is to modify the receiver holes to be slotted. I'm weighing if that's easier than machining the posts... Has anyone had success doing that?

I did mine ~mid 2000s or so, it's hard to remember but I am pretty sure I just bent the hangers up a little.

Make sure someone hasn’t added an incorrect washer inbetween the cannon shaft and the reciever.

I drilled some new holes in the receiver to lower it about 1/8", but this is not the solution. First, the middle nut become inaccessible and you have to remove the lock lever while the assembly is inside the machine. Second, the lockdown bar requires modification because the notches are no longer tall enough to reach the tabs on the lock lever. And last, the biggest problem, lowering the receiver causes the back of the playfield behind the hinges to be raised, and this causes the launch habitrail to come in contact with the glass.

I suspect the best solution is to machine down the cannon posts. This has the added benefit that the balls drop into the cannons and cannot bounce back out onto the VUK rails and potentially into the lanes.

Insert cleaning day today. I also installed an LED OCD. Holy crap what a difference! I thought it might be subtle at best, but it reminds me of going from a flickering CRT to an LCD. I can't believe how much the slight dimming vs. a complete on/off of the LEDs makes such a dramatic change. It's highly, highly recommended and I have a GI OCD in the mail.

Oh, and if anyone has a drop target reset plate you can ship to Canada, please message me.

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I got a STTNG back in my collection and decided to do an LCARS monitor. Plug n Play. These will be available in my Pinside Shop and on Mezelmods' site within the next few weeks. Same price as my WPC TVs ($173).

If you're interested, send me a DM, so I can plan on how many to initially make.

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Make one that plays any mp4 found on an SD card, so I can watch STTNG episodes on it

Hi Everyone. We (cybermrc and I) need some tech help! The F105 3A slow blow fuse is clearing (blowing). Looks like a hard short and is clearing instantly. We replaced all of the low and high power transistors. After pulling the original transistors, checked them and none of them had any issues . Reinstalled the power board and F105 is still clearing.

Can we get some tech help? Some trouble shooting tips would be awesome!

PS. F105 used to clear each time I moved the machine and I would replace the fuse and the game would work perfectly. Recently, F105 started clearing consistently. We thought it was a board issue but it doesn't seem to be.

cybermrc

Try disconnecting all the solenoid and flasher connections from the board and then try it. You might want to buy a resettable circuit breaker, 2A should be a good size, solder it to a blown fuse and you may see what's failing before it trips, you'll also save on fuses.

Thank you bobukcat ! The game is on location so it will take me a minute to try it, but I'm excited to have a lead.

Says F105 is solenoid 1-8 and that's guns, all 3 VUK, plunger, knocker, kickback. I'm gonna bet it's the plunger coil twisted or assembled wrong and the tabs are grounding out on the cabinet.

oh, and its a 3A fuse so better get the 3A and a 5A if your gonna work on WPC. I keep a variety of the reset fuses for occasions just like this.

Hello Everyone,

I need some help/guidance. I'm a new STTNG owner, I love it, I've had to do several repairs and am enjoying the challenge.

I have an intermittent but consistent issue. Without going into too much detail, I've found that I have an issue with a specific switch:

Under L.Gun SW.2
T.3 32
WHT-RED GRN-ORN

I've found the wires in the back box, everything there looks ok. What I'm trying to find is where this physical switch is under the playfield. It's obviously under the left gun but I can't figure out specifically which switch.

Could someone please show me which specific switch this is?

I haven't looked at that one myself, but it's probably in the subway to the left popper. Switch 36 indicates a ball in the popper for loading the left cannon, so 32 checks that a ball has rolled to the popper. Page 2-43 in the manual: https://www.ipdb.org/files/2357/Williams_1993_Star_Trek_The_Next_Generation_Operations_Manual_with_OCR.pdf

Thank you!! I guess I should have tracked down the manual to find this, exactly what I needed.

You have entered the "opto troubleshooting" holodeck phase, good luck. Seriously though, those optos are stacked and are known to have solder joint issues. Take them all out, clean, resolder (or replace) and be careful to check alignment when you put it all back together. Engage!

My machine started doing random multiballs during play. I checked the trough and the 7 LEDs there are good. I went to reseat all the connectors on the 16-opto driver board and now the red LED on that board doesn't turn on at all. I rechecked those connections. I have a replacement board on order, but is there anywhere else I should check?

Would check why no power to that board?

If you get a replacement and there is no power your in the same situation

Well I found the problem. The 7-opto receiver connector has been bodged together and the ground broke. Time to switch out to a trifurcon.
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That will do it

I replaced the connector on the 7-opto receiver and still got a random multiball. I replaced all the LEDs on the transmitter and receiver boards as well as all the large resistors and the receiver capacitor. Again, a random multiball.

Something interesting happened though. In attract mode it launched a couple balls... Hmmm... I put it into Switch Edges Test and just waited. Sure enough, after a few minutes TROUGH UP triggered with no balls in the machine. I'm now thinking of replacing the ICs on the receiver board. Should I also be looking at replacing the cap and ICs on the 16-opto board?

you should put it in switch test and wiggle the connectors on the though boards. If that doesn't produce some info on the situation, literally bang on the middle of the playfield HARD with your fist. loose connection or bad component usually show up this way.

The "bang on the playfield" method has solved a lot of problems over the years. And wiggling connectors.

Funny that in my experience, a lot of electronic problems really are mechanical in nature, i.e., bad connections, cold solder joints, etc.

I tried just that, but couldn't get anything to happen. Funny enough, I was moving everything around for a minute or two and it was only until I stopped for a while that the opto triggered again. Ugh. I'm just replacing the 7-opto boards.

Have you replaced all the optos in the entire machine or just the trough board?

Just the trough optos and receivers. Those are the only optos that are triggering erroneously.

I'd look at the others.
I had to s of problems with old optos under the cannons.
It wasn't until I replaced the LED did I get a stable, working game.

New Homepin trough boards have completely fixed the issue. Upon further inspection, there were a bunch of suspect traces on the boards.

If ingo333 is still working on LX-9, I found some bugs (at least, I hope it's not just my machine):

1 - The Borg ship lock light works in Test, but never in play. Even when the Status Report indicates there is one or more balls locked it never lights -- even when the right lane Lock light is lit.
2 - There is no light show in Time Rift when you collect an artifact.
3 - In Asteroid, the Neutral Zone should be lit to indicate there is an asteroid there.
4 - If you have two balls locked with the third lock lit and Holodeck lit, I wonder if Holodeck should not be lit since shooting the drop target hole will enable multiball and not the holodeck.
5 - Using LX-8, when the Kicker in Return To Duty is set to on, the Kicker should always be lit if RTD is still counting down.
6 - When you Advance Rank and are already at max rank, it would be nice if there was a sound effect. Maybe the Final Frontier successful shot sound effect?

I passed the message on to him

sure... doing the final touches here and there =)

great! Thanks for reporting!!

Left Lock lights basically when you light the lock via a shot against the raised drop target and there are less than 2 balls locked.

The drop target is lowered when:

- holodeck is lit
- Q-Mission or
- Battle Simulation is running.

The 3rd ball always has to end in the subway to make sure there is a ball for cannon operations. And choosing "LIGHT LOCK" in the skill selection menu always lights only the right lock....

The only other option to light the left lock is the "Launch-A-Probe" bonus.

Hmm... that's interesting. I never noticed.. I'll have to check. Thanks!

There is no asteroid there. One is in the Command-Decicion-/Left-Hole.. so a slow ball into the NZ could trigger an asteroid explosion.

I'm owning this machine for ~28 years now... and it has always been like that. The 3rd locked ball is not starting the holodeck. I would need to hide the holodeck insert.. And the "holodeck is lit" animation would not light the holodeck insert if the 3rd lock was already lit... that would be even more confusing I guess..

But then you would lose the information if Kickback is lit while RTD is running. With LX-9 you get 6 RTD-blinks if the Kickback was triggered because of RTD.. with LX-8 you have only 3 blinks... So you get an indication when the Kickback has fired because of RTD... with LX-9 it's even better visible.

That's an interesting idea... is there no sound effect? I know there is a "Bonus Maxed ...." animation.. and tbh. I never missed a sound effect there... it doesn't give much points. It's an idea, not sure if it would be an improvement and it would def. need an adjustment... but we are already full... but I'm going to think about and/or try it out.

Thanks again!

I'm beginning to think there's a problem with my machine then because as long as the right lock is lit, I can always lock a ball via the left lock into the Borg ship -- even on the third ball to trigger multiball start. The left lock light never lights. One thing I notice is that any time the ball hits the Delta ramp switch, I can always hear the Borg diverter moving...

EDIT: I traced the problem to a bodged together solder joint on the drop target switch 57. One of the white/violet wires was barely hanging on. Strange that the switch would register just fine under test though. I guess that one wire goes to separate logic somewhere for the left lock light.

That explains it!

Thanks for all your hard work.

Which one has the correct colour? Top or bottom?

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I'm not at my machine, but I think top is correct. If not, it certainly looks better than the bottom one.

Definatly top.

I thought as much... That was part of a full plastic set from Planetary. I find with the darker plastics the same color correction(?) makes them look a bit richer. Too bad it's not a match to OEM though.

New Pinsound Firmware Update

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Just wanted to follow up on this. I successfully replaced the receiver and transmitter LEDs in switch 32 (under left gun switch 2). No more errors!!!!

I have this weird behavior, on the left side VUK (side wire form, not for the gun) the came continuously tries to feed a ball into the vertical kicker to hold for game play, but once it gets there it shoots it up for it to drain back in. Like the game is stuck in a loop?

Your opto isn't working correctly, or another opto somewhere else isn't.

One of the subway diverters is not functioning. Go in coil test and check both. If they work in test then you have a switch/opto issue.

I'm getting some noticeable dimming of the LEDs in my backbox and GI when I use the flippers. I also get some pretty rough flickering when using a GI OCD in the shields when the brightness in the GI OCD software is setting anything less than 6. This means that I can't have the shields at a low brightness level. When I do the GI test on the machine itself, level 6 causes flickering as well like it did in herg's test video *before* the GI OCD board.

All the test LEDs on the GI OCD board are fine... Is it possible I need to get my transformer rewound? Or could it be a bad cap on the power board? I would think that if either of those were an issue the test LEDs on the GI OCD board would be throwing codes. I do have straightforward 6.3V LEDs in the machine for the GI, so perhaps those could be the culprit?

These issues are there when the GI OCD board is removed as well.

You likely forgot to calibrate/program the GI OCD board. It doesn’t support the STTNG shields(gi string 5) out-of-the box. You have to follow the instructions from the OCD website.

Yes, I've set GI string 5 and saved it to the board. I even powered everything off, restarted the software, reconnected the board, and reread the settings from the board to verify the string was saved. It's driving me crazy...

I'd never consider rewinding a coil ... not even sure that's possible.
I'd only consider rewinding a coil IF it got catastrophically hot and melted the windings together.

I assume you've clearly tested the wall voltage and can see no dip on the line voltage during these flips.
If so; then the problem is somewhere else. If CAPs are known-good / replaced... then you have a high impedance path in your power supply.
Some amount of flickering / dimming is expected. I'm leaning toward there isn't a problem with your game.