I have a pretty simple question. I am in the process of shopping out my new (to me) STTNG. I have the subway off, have cleaned it and cleaned the diverters. I have cleaned the optos on the subway as well. I am wondering about the two VUKs on the left side of the playfield. These have two sets of optos each on them but I don't see a way to clean them without taking the whole assembly off the playfield and then removing the optos. Is this really the only way to do this? If so, is it something I should do while I have the subway off?

If you have some long q-tips you can clean the optos with alcohol while the subway is off but if you're doing a real shop-job you should pull those mechs off and thoroughly clean inside them as the balls will just carry the dirt in there up to your playfield and spread it all over, basically negating a lot of the work you've done. While apart it's a good idea to check / reflow the solder on those optos too as they tend to crack.

Agree with bobukcat, take them off and clean them! It looks harder than it is. I just recently did this and it wasn't as involved as it looks to be.

Ok thanks guys, off they come!

I'm looking to sell or trade my Star Trek: The Next Generation (STTNG). I can deliver to the Midwest Gaming Classic on Sunday. Game looks great and is working perfectly. Fully LED'ed and has the interactive ships and cannon lasers. Some of the games I'd be interested in would include: Attack From Mars, Ghostbusters, Iron Maiden, Spider-Man, Whitewater, etc. Plus cash on my end in most cases. Feel free to send me a PM to discuss in more details.

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These assemblies are very easy to remove with the subway off, each one has a single molex connector and 4 screws, they come right off.

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Yes they are plus its a good way to check all those opts to make sure they are working too. I had a few transmitters out on my game and it was causing some weird issues..

Painted my Borg ship over the last few days. Primed in white, airbrushed grey as a base coat, washed with some thinned black, dry brushed with a light grey to desired effect and color, then a steel color over the open areas followed by a light blue mixed with silver for the blue highlights. I went over the panel lines with a pencil and then erased most of it to just leave some in the crevices. Lastly I painted in the Borg logo.

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Paint job looks cool but did you leave the windows open?

yes there were no windows in it when I got it and there are blue LED flashers inside so it lights blue without any windows.

Impressive work. Would you do this for a fee?

Sure, not sure what it's worth though!

Playing my freshly shopped and waxed WOZ tonight and said "that is the hardest fricking game I've ever played!". Hit start on my freshly cleaned and waxed STTNG sitting next to it and Picard said "hold my Romulan ale and watch this!".

Having an opto problem. When I bought my STTNG it was working but would shoot out balls randomly at times. I figured it was dirty optos. So I shopped the machine and cleaned all the optos. When I put it back together it was continuously shooting balls from the shooter lane area. I went into switch test and none of the trough switches were registering with balls in the trough. I was able to wiggle the connector to the blue board (the wide brown header) and the switches would register but then fail again when I let go of the connector. Now it won't register at all even with wiggling the connector. I reflowed the solder to the header, no change.

Is this likely a board issue or a connector issue? The one LED on the board is lit red so I have power.

Most likely a bad IDC connector. Look to see if the wires are not secure in the "pinch" points of the idc connector.
On mine; I had to actually replace that IDC connector with real crimp-on connectors so it would be rock solid. Given the game is over 20years old; the vibration has cause those IDC blade connection to just go bad.

Ok that’s what I thought too. I’ll order a new connector and pins and see what happens.

Question, on my machine that connector is in the middle of the wire if that makes sense. Do I just double over the wire and insert it into the crimp pin that way?

There are two ways to do it, but doubling it over isn't one of them.

1: Cut the wire and the current IDC point, strip both ends, twist them together and crimp into the pin. This can be done but it can be frustrating and difficult because the wire is then a little bigger than the crimp is designed for. The type of crimper used also contributes to the ease or frustration level.

2: Cut the wire at the IDC point, strip both ends. Take new piece of wire about three inches long and strip both ends. Twist one end of this wire and the two ends of the original wire you cut together and solder them. Cover the soldered connection with a piece of heat shrink tubing then crimp the other end of this new wire into the pin for the new connector. This is a somewhat more elegant solution but does take a little more time and effort.

Got it, thanks! I was under the impression the crimp pins also punctures the shielding to make the connection and stripping wasn’t needed. Glad I asked!

There are lots of good videos on how to crimp molex pins on YouTube. Stripping them to the proper length is just about the hardest part for me, lol.

Selling my WOZRR, and looking for a STTNG for a reasonable price. Players is ok and I’m certainly ok with the price. Just figured I’d post if anyone is looking to move on.

I HAVE SHOCKING NEWS...I'VE DECIDED MY COLORDMD HAS GOT TO GO!

Yep it's true; after much research, testing, and polls (my wife) I have decided that the appearance for the Color LED provides a far superior image to the Color LCD display for this title. I intend to provide side-by-side test comparisons in the near future...but I do get distracted easily.

I'm planning a casual pingolf event including STTNG, and would like to hear thoughts on proposed points and particularly rules-based goals. Many of the players at the event will be fairly skilled.

This pingolf event will be a bit different in that players will be offered one of four goal difficulty levels to choose from at the start of each game.

They'll play each game twice--once shooting for a point total and a second game to reach a rule-based goal.

To make the scores more golf-like and encourage goal-achieving the games will be set to five balls, so I don't think these goals are too terribly harsh. I planned to use the tournament settings Bowen described at http://pinball.org/rules/startrekthenextgeneration-notes.txt.

I welcome suggestions and feedback based on my initial stab at the goals, from easy to difficult:

Points goals: 200m, 500m, 800m, 1.5b
Rules goals: Start a Neutral Zone mode, start Borg mb, reach Captain rank, start Final Frontier

Maybe number of artifacts?

Hi there; I am hoping someone can help with this!

I had a one of my trough coils melt today; in chasing down that, I noticed this wire near the drop target assembly was broken.

My Sol. 40 (top drop down), Sol 39 (top drop up), Sol 38 (under diverter bottom) and Sol 40 (under diverter top) are all out.

The broken wire is a yellow purple that buzzes to connector J4 (pin1) of the 8 driver pcb assembly.

Sol 38 (under diverter bottom) is the melted one.

Any tips? Does anybody have a detailed pic of this area of the game?

I looked online and through every pic in this thread. I am sure I will also have to replace some board components, but I admit I am not familiar with the 8 driver PCB assembly.

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Actually, I found this picture on my second trip through the gallery, but confirmation would be helpful; it looks like three wires are coming from the lug here, mine only has two from this drop target coil:

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Doh; to further answer my question, this is well detailed on Pinwiki; I would have had no idea how important this single wire is!

http://pinwiki.com/wiki/images/b/b4/STTNGDiodeTieBackAtCoilPower.jpg

If this disconnects it can blow transistors and cause locked on coils.

Does anyone else ever get to this point and think "what the @#^& did I get myself into"? =)

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Hope you made plenty of pictures

I cursed a few times on my STTNG project but it plays great now.

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Oh I did. Still a daunting task!

Looks better than my project

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ACK! Doing this without a rotisserie is inconceivable:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/sttng-owners-club/page/23#post-3577357

DIY Pinball rotisserie in less than an hour on a tight budget:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/playfield-swap-without-rotissary/page/2#post-2901464

Worst pricing card ever.

Interesting approach, I don't believe this will save the 8 driver board transistors but may keep the coils from melting as well as minimize damage to the 8 driver board to just blown transistors (no smoke).

There seems to be a lot of confusion on what this wire does ... Ill try and break this down...

NO. The aux driver burns up because this tieback wire is what connects the flyback diodes back to the coils. When a coils field collapses a very large voltage opposite in polarity to the source voltage is created; this negative voltage forward biases the flyback diode allowing current to flow through it and back to the coil where the energy is dissipated as heat; without this wire the large voltage spike hammers the drive transistor and is of sufficient voltage to destroy it.

Yes. This is a good way to go. From an engineering standpoint a soldered wire is always better than a connector. I assume Williams decided to go this way to remove the human element from the equation as a technician missing the tieback connector when replacing a power board would end up causing the same damage as the broken tieback wire does.

The best way to go is to install the flyback diodes directly on the coil itself, this way the high voltage pulse is handled at the source; again there is a human element added as miswiring this diode/coil will cause immediate damage to both the diode and drive transistor.

Yes, I was talking about the fuses as the fuse needs to be large enough to last during normal operation so it isn't going to blow until the drive transistor is locked on.

I understood you perfectly.

EDITED:
I probably didn't explain it well; I knew I should have made a picture of what I was trying to describe.

If flyback diode D13 (and the 3 other diodes connected to the coils controlled by the 8 driver PCB) were located on the coils themselves, the tieback wire would not be needed as its sole purpose in life is to dissipated the voltage created by the coils connected to the aux driver when their fields collapse; this wire is only needed because the flyback diodes are on the 8 driver board.

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more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_diode

I will do one of the blackbox ties suggested on pinwiki. Still need to start working on the board damage but I did order a spare 8 driver board just in case.

And I have to replace the melted diverter coil. Oh well. It all seems fixable so far. Nothing unobtanium lost

It comes from the power driver board J107-1

Figured I'd ask here to get the most knowledgeable answer. I'm thinking about bringing the project STTNG pin in the marketplace back to life : https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/78268 STTNG has been on my list for awhile, but I can't justify the price they are currently going for.

From the pictures and descriptions, it looks like it needs
1) complete set of plastics
2) probably a new cpu or have the cpu repaired
3) new cannon plastics
4) Coin door and handle need to be stripped and repainted
5) ramp flap

The only things that really concern me is the rust/corrosion I'm seeing and the fact it doesn't boot. I assume it's the cpu from the batteries leaking. The positive is that it looks like it has a really solid albeit dirty playfield. In yall's experience with this pin, is the one a good restore candidate without breaking the bank?

I thought about this one too - but the questionable boards make this a no-go for me. The MPU clearly needs to be replaced ($100), and most likely the PDB will have some issues - at $350 for a full replacement, that’s a lot of money already. Add $200 for plastics, and a replacement of the rusty parts ( $$ ?), and a LOT of work, it’s way too much to sink into a game that regularly sells for $4500 in much better condition. The price is probably never going to be lower though, so there’s that. I would maybe give it $3500 because you’re easily sinking $1000 to get it up and running and decent

It it were me think I would pass on this particular one for the asking price and wait for a more reasonably priced project to come along or add money and get one that's ready to go for around 4,500 range.

Thanks for the advice. Exactly what I was thinking. If the boards were good and it was booting, it would already be in my truck. But it's too much of a gamble and I think I'm going to have to sink too much time and money into it... The search continues..

Back in the club as of yesterday!

Anyone have a problem with their neutral zone cliffy being loose and floating around the hole too much? Maybe I have to bed the gripper parts in a bit?

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The point you are referencing on the a driver board comes from your 50V source at J107-1 on the power driver board, through the tieback wire connected to J4-1; there is no other source of 50V on the aux driver board. The the only reason you have 50V there is because its the voltage on the coil and its only there because the flyback diodes are located on this board and they must be connected across the coils in order to discharge the high voltage pulse that's generated when to coil power is removed and its field collapses.

Welcome back!