If the swap doesn't fix it, I have a very simple step that I would do next. Since it started to work for a while and then crapped, it sounds like you do have a bad connection somewhere that is vibrating out of place. I'd reseat everything on all boards and press on all seated chips. This simple step has saved me many headaches, particularly with this game. Even if this doesn't fix your current problem, remember this simple step when you have strange issues that come and go. After the reseat, I'd also move wiggle/move any connectors related to the graphics/DMD around in hopes of finding cold solder, loose connections or cracked wiring. If voltages are good and the swap is still bad, you have a bad connection or failing chip. Because it worked momentarily, my money is on a bad connection.

I looked at your playfield pictures from this post some time ago and something was just off about it and I finally figured it out! The playfield you are rebuilding has what appears to be a Dec 14 manufacturing date and is likely why I didn't recognize the color registration marks on it. What really threw me off was the playfield in your picture has a machine specific barcode label (SN 336042) for the specific game it came from ... unless I'm still missing something, I'm assuming this doesn't match your machine at all.

Images Original playfield from machine S/N 432591 and matching part labels:
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Just went and looked everything matches but the MPU, driver, and dmd board. I cleaned the cab with some krud kutter when I first got it. It did dissolved some of the ink on the serial number tag.

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F116 blew for the second time. Is it normal for F116 itself to to be too hot to touch for long with a Color DMD and Pinsound installed? I already replaced BR5 and C30 to fix the slow cannons but I'm wondering what else I could do? Thanks!

Nice, I wonder if they had multiple board manufacturers for this build.

Update on my display issue - I replaced the DMD with one from a friend's Twilight Zone pin. Worked. Looking over the babcock branded display that was in there, it seems like a section of the board north of the power connectors was cooked. Should I be concerned for the currently working one?

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This doesn't sound right, What is your voltage at TP1?

You can disconnect J116, J117, and J118 one at a time to try and find out which one is pulling excessive current. You will want to keep your coin door open for this as all of your optos will loose power during these tests and cause the game to freak out.

I wouldn't worry too much, but I also wouldn't spend too much time trying to fix a 25+ year old plasma display. A color DMD is one of the best upgrades you can do for STTNG, but if you are on a tight budget you may want to consider a cheap monochrome LED display. Either way you go, the driver and display will generate less heat and use less power, its a win-win.

This^^^ and,

If you have a lot of mods daisy chained on those same connectors, it could cause the symptoms you are having too.

+2 on the color DMD. Fits this game better than any other IMO. If your voltages are fine, any other DMD should be fine.

Thank you again for the good advice. The color display will be an upgrade I'll look for in the new year.
For now, I've gotta shop all the rubbers out, figure out how to clean out dust from the habit trails underneath, and fix the left cannon error (it's not the switches, and it's not a dirty opto, so I'm guessing something with the wiring or a cold joint).

There are no optos associated with this, and since this switch is not part of the cannon wiring harness AND you are sure that the switch is good. Then the solution is simple!

1) The 8 driver PCB is NOT sending the column 9 pulse to the left gun home switch (J5-1 (VIO-WHT) to SW97)
2) The 8 driver PCB is NOT passing the closed switch data (SW97) to the CPU (J5-1 (VIO-WHT) to J209-8 (WHT-VIO))

EDIT:
3) The cam is not actually closing the switch when the gun rotates to home (switch would function in edge test when manually pressed, but fail to operate on its own) Mechanical adjustment of the home bracket and/or switch positioning on the bracket.

Maybe I'm using the wrong nomenclature, but aren't the optos the infrared emitter and receiver that let the game know a ball is in the cannon?

I finally got into it last night, unscrewed the cannon shell and found the receiver side had a broken off wire (orange). Re-soldered it on and that seems to have restored function. Interestingly enough, the receiver PCB doesn't have a through hole for that wire.

Worked through a few loose bulbs that weren't working, and replaced a majority of the rubber bumpers, it's amazing how much better the game plays now.

Discovered a few of the plastics are cracked and warped, but going to leave it as is for now.

I noticed the Romulan ship light/strobe isn't working, how does one test that light (and the red flasher in the back right corner, as well?)

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Yes, those are optos. I think pinguy meant that there are no optos associated with the cannon finding the home position but if the opto is closed or not working it thinks a ball is there and will try to clear it.

Test 10 - Lamps and Flashers, just make sure you close the door or the interlock switch for the flashers to fire.

Correct. When you say the cannon cant find home I assume you are getting an error seeing a X "cannon cant find home" error, or you are seeing a home switch error in canon test.

A failed cannon opto will cycle the cannon and fire the cannon coil repeatedly in an attempt to remove the ball from the cannon.

Hi there.
Need some advice. I'll be hopefully joining the club this Sunday. Looking at two machines and plan on taking one of them home.
Do you guys have any tips as in what to look for. Not my first pin, but I did not intend to test every single switch, opto, etc. since it would probably take forever.
Are there any items on this pin that are prone to fail and should be checked, and if so, what is the best way of checking? pull the glass and run the ball through or just the diagnostic menue?
Any help is greatly appreciated.

IMO it all depends on price but a good place to start is lifting the PF to have a good look at the subway and troughs. Finger test the diverters, look for excessive build up, etc.

This pin is probably in the top 5 pins of all time for being a royal pain in the ass. There are a zillion things that could be wrong with it. Power cycle it and see how the cannons run their test. Canons can be the most obvious potential issue. Then I'd just play the game.

My strategy when buying games is to do a lot of talking with the guy selling it. I find that 95% of pinheads are very honest people and will reveal every little thing wrong with it. Ask if it's had any strange symptoms that happen and go away etc. Ask if it ever blows fuses and what work has been done to it recently. Ask if it's been at least surface shopped. Look underneith for any obvious issues.

I almost always find a few things when I get a machine home, but I expect to. I keep my machines extremly clean and functioning 100%. It's a simple reality that many others do not. If the guy seems honest and the game plays well, I hand over the cash and do my detailed testing at home. I've never had an issue up to this point.

I forgot to mention it but even a brief perusal of this thread will tell you to be sure to do the tie-back mod if it hasn't been done already!

The price will drive whats acceptable and whats not.

Turn game on, see if balls stage properly and cannons park at home, play the game, look for maintenance alerts, run cannon test in diagnostics. Remove glass, block cannon opto (use paper or something), the cannon should rotate and coil should fire.

HEAD: Look for burnt connectors, corrosion on the CPU, wiring hacks, CPU board power mod (this is a sign of an issue that can haunt you later) Check condition of translight...these are hard to find anymore.

Playfield (TOP): check the ramps, inserts, and borg ship for damage.

Playfield (bottom) and cabinet: Look for cracks in subway, wiring hacks, overall condition.

Thanks guys. Will report back tomorrow night.

What is the  tie-back mod ?

Officially joining the club.

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Traditionally the stuff covering the playfield is glass... that's a crazy shrinkwrap mod!

Congratulations and welcome aboard!

lol....
Glass is under it as you can see. I hadn't unpacked 100% yet. Use the shrink wrap to keep cardboard angles at the bottom of the cab in place, so that I can slide it in and out of the car without having to worry about scratching up the art on the side bottom.

Thank you. Onto some mods. Debating about getting the Halmarkt ornaments or simply painting the existing ships.
Also, is there a good source for the dome cannon lights? And I have tried to find the laser cannon mod everybody is talking about, might just be blind, but if anybody can point me into the right direction, I would appreciate it.

Don't debate it, they are inexpensive to buy and and mount yourself and look great.

Good call, the domes look so much better!

DIY Info:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/sttng-owners-club?tq=dome&tu=pin_guy

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Hey everyone! I have been a member of the STTNG club for sometime but have decided to move on to something new. My machine plays 100% no credit dot.

If anyone is interested in a nice machine complete with Pinsound, Flipper fidelity speakers, cannon laser mod, tilt graphics blades, Zit’s decals, some upgrades ships and comet LEDs let me know.

I prefer a local sale and am just 15 minutes from Downtown Cleveland.

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I finished creating an interactive lighting mod for the Borg ship using a Pinduino. I love how this came out!

Code is open source: https://github.com/elyons/professor_pinball_pinduino_sketches/tree/master/Star-Trek-TNG-Borg-Ship

Instructions for making and install: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QDoO863FE4dWp3FHEwc2Je9srSBjR-u140ANjziPrn4

And I can make plug and play kits for people who are interested: https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1025-professor-pinball/02169-pinduino-sttng-borg-ship-lighting

Of course, I like it when people make their own. If anyone goes that route, feel free to PM me if you have any questions (always happy to help). Also, let me know what you think of the code and if you have any suggestions.

Wow, Eric, this look really awesome.
Now this is a hard question for me, the borg pinduino, or the ramps pinduino
I think both is not possible

Helping out a guy with this machine and need some insight if you owners would??? Several questions/issues:
1. When the game is first turned on the two ships atop the slingshots, only the one on the left side moves upon turning the game on. Is this normal?
2. I read this before but not finding it so being lazy I am asking again .... this game takes 6 balls for which the game automatically puts a ball in the two ships atop the slingshots but the game I am looking at only has 2 balls in the ball trough so where are the other 2 stored?
3. Upon the machines doing a test I am seeing the following switch errors (apologies as I dont have a manual):
A. 57 Top Drop Target (there is no drop targets????)
B. 65 Trough RL 2
C. F8 UL Flipper Button

If you can all help me out with helping my neighbor would much appreciate it!

THANKS!

Normal for me if they fire when needed this should be okay.

This is not normal. 4 balls are stored in the trough in the 'game reset' position. The other two are stored under the playfield in the vertical up-kickers. Balls are loaded into the canons as needed during gameplay.

A. There is a single drop target to the left of the rollover lanes which blocks the ball lock. It's directly underneath the Borg ship behind the scoop.
B. Sounds like your trough optos need to be cleaned/replaced. If the trough isn't working properly it'll cause a whole host of problems.
C. Maybe an opto on the left flipper board

If you haven't already, go get the manual from IPDB: https://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?any=star+trek+next&search=Search+Database&searchtype=quick

1. - completely normal.

2. - normally the game "stages" the balls in various trough/VUK areas (and Borg ship?)
Best to go into Test menu, - T.18 Clear Out Balls Test (close coin door to enable voltage for solenoids to eject balls)
Catch the balls as they come out and make sure you indeed have 6 in the machine.

3. - a) there is a single drop target located/hidden in upper-loop.
Page 89 of manual -- #18 is the target.
See page 79 of manual for assy.

b) Page 95 for switch locations. (switch may be showing closed because there's a ball there?)

c) There is no upper-left flipper. F8 is not used, per the switch matrix on page 94. (unless your spinner is not registering, you can ignore F8. But the spinner uses the circuit on the Fliptronics board... so if spinner is not registering points... it may be something deeper.)

This is not entirely accurate, 3 balls are "staged" one in each of the VUK's leaving 3 in the trough.

The picture below shows where 3 of the 6 balls get staged:
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And with all balls removed:
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The Romulan Warbird 'Flasher' under the green dome isn't working. I put it into test (and close the door) and everything else on the board is lighting up. Obviously thought the bulb was burnt, but it's not - I traded the bulb with the one behind the 'Return to Duty' flasher and it worked fine. I unscrewed the connector, was a little tarnished but cleaning it out did no change. Tested with the voltmeter (AC, 20VAC setting) but I was not able to get a solid voltage reading, was floating/bumping between 0.5vac and 2.3vac unsteady. I traced the wire (green+white and red+white) to a molex connector, tested voltage there as well, same results. I do have continuity from the molex through the wires and bulb.

I guess next step would be to trace these red+green wires to see where they are connected, but does anyone have an idea what could be going on?

Thanks!

Flashers are controlled like solenoids so they are D.C. volts but they are pulsed quickly so seeing the actual reading with a meter is nearly imposible but some meters are much better for this than others. You can ground the lug of the driver transistor very quickly with a test lead and that will tell you if the wiring to the socket is good, it has voltage from the supply, etc. You can also measue resistance (game off!!) across the socket with the bulb inserted and make sure it matches up to similar bulbs in the game as well.

Thank you all for the info.....will try to get back over to my neighbors this weekend and check it out!

Thanks! Both can be connected and have that setup in my game. Pinduinos are stackable and I use one to control the ramps and one for the Borg ship. For the video, I turned off the ramps just so the ramps wouldn't overshadow the shop. I'll get a video together of both running -- the effects are pretty amazing.

Indeed. Thank you for the correction. It always just seems like 2 because the right canon hardly ever gets fired on my game.

ArcadeDanger Since you just acquired this machine the list of possibilities is much longer than if it was known to be working and stoped on its own.

The big question here is this ... "Is your Right Ramp Flasher (SOL 42) also out?"
The reason for this question is both of these flashers operate differently than all other flashers in the game as that they are controlled by the 8-Driver PCB assembly (aka Aux Driver Board) located in the upper right corner of the back box. If both of these flashers are out, you likely have a disconnected connector at J3 on the the Aux Driver board, or at the Z connector that ties these tow connections into the rest of the lamp matrix.

If only one of these flashers is out, you can have an issue with its driver Q9 (TIP102), or even a bad ribbon cable causing a dropout of data bit 4 (romulan flasher control signal) into the aux driver board at J1...best way to check for this is to flip over the ribbon cable between the aux driver J1 and cpu J204. THIS MUST BE DONE AT BOTH ENDS OF THE CABLE !!!

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Here is the video showing both the ramps and Borg ship being driven by Pinduinos. Two pinduinos are required and I've posted a photo of the stacked pinduinos in my STTNG. Damn, I love this game and so happy to have one back in my collection.

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Have my STTNG for about a week now. Love the game. Couple question came up though, one on rules/settings and one on the hardware.
1. Rules. Are you guys playing with 3 or 5 balls per game. The original game card reads 5 balls per game on my machine, but I have it set on 3.
2. Hardware. No idea why I did not see it when I checked the machine when I picked it up, guess it was playing well, and the guy I bought it from pointed everything out he changed.....well, except for one item, which he might have not changed himself. I just realized I do not have the typical William's opto boards for the flippers but old style contact (see image below). Now, I am not sure if this really is a big issue and I should bother, but I am wondering if this is the cause why on the shuttle mini game I constantly hit the walls (maybe my reaction time is just way too slow).

Thanks

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No image attached.

uups. Here it is, see above post.

The picture shows that the UPPER LEFT flipper switch wiring is sitting in the bottom of the cabinet...while there is no upper left flipper, this switch is still used for some functions ... like moving the shuttle left in video mode.

It's your machine, set it however you want to. If you start reaching The Final Frontier every game, you will want to set it lower. For those time you really really want one more ball, you always have your buy in button for an extra ball ... unless you disable it.

Well. I can still move the shuttle, which is weird. There is only one wire left that is actually connected to the connector. Yellow and Grey. Same on the right side and the upper ride flipper is still working. Better pic here.

Sorry, here are the pics.

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Not connected is the grey and yellow wire which appears to be +12V. Guess those were the 12V for the opto boards that I am missing. Guess you can call it a hack, but it raises the question why Williams put in an opto board for the flipper in the first case?

ahh, I couldn't tell from the picture that there are multiple wires soldered to the connector on the switch. It should work fine as it is, I can only speculate on the why, I assume it would have to do with increasing reliability of the flippers.

One more question (for now). I am debating about adding an NVRAM, is there any time related game items that would be affected by this? I cannot seem to see any, since the only thing I can find on time is the time and date display in attract mode.