Hi everyone!

I'm new to pinball and have developed a passion/obsession on anything pinball. I've been looking around for a SS pinball project to learn as much as possible before dropping 5k-7k on a future pin and collection. I'm competent at the EE tasks for this project and am lucky to have friends/family that will be able to assist with the woodworking portions.

This machine is purely for educational purposes and I'm not expecting to sell it once I have completed.

Please feel to post feedback as I go along!

First, some background:

I found this machine deep in southern Kentucky from a small "trading shop." The story of this machine is that he picked it from a gentleman's garage. When he found it, the backbox was on the floor. From the badges, it looks like the machine was routed up until 1994:

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Here's some initial pictures once I got the machine back to Ohio:
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One my concerns is that it looks like the backbox has some water damage. My thoughts are that if it was sitting on the floor, it could have gotten wet over the years. Here's the backbox insert where you can definitely see moisture has expanded the wood. Also, you can see some corrosion on the bare wire:
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The boards are in "decent" shape. The good news is that I haven't seen any hacks or oddities. I'll need to further inspect, but I haven't seen any battery corrosion. I'm sure it's there, but I need more inspection.

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Under the playfield, again no crazy hacks from what I am seeing, however two coil stops are broken and the coils were just hanging about. Pictures are blurry, but don't worry, there will be a lot more coming up:

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Inside the cabinet is pretty dirty, but nothing that can be overcome with a little elbow grease:

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I'm leaving out a very important piece. I did not fire up the machine when I bought it. I was told that the gentleman who had it in his garage never turned it on. So, my thoughts are this machine has probably been sitting at least 10 years. I did some basic checking, put the backbox on and plugged all the interconnects back together, and then decided to plug in the machine. I kept the fire extinguisher close, but I wanted to know what specifically I was dealing with. The machine did fire up, and I had some GI on the backbox and the playfield (two lamps to be correct). I'm also seeing the top red LED on the CPU board light up, so I do know it's getting some sort of current. The alpha-numeric displays gave me nothing.

My test above gave me hope that this machine was salvageable. It's never going to be a pristine machine, but that's not its job.

So, here's what is upcoming in the future:

1. Pull all the boards and religiously follow vid's guides on bulletproofing System 6 boards. I've got all my replacement capacitors from sound/power supply on the way.
2. The 27ohm resistors will be replaced as well.
3. Move the batteries off the board (duh).
4. Replace the 40 pin connector.
5. Confirm all fuses are the correct specifications and replace any that are not.
6. Fuse the rectifiers (so the house doesn't burn down).
7. Wash all the wiring harness that goes to the cabinet in the back box.
8 Other general cleaning in the backbox.

Once I get the electronics righted, I'll stop and do a check to see if the machine has resolved any other of it current issues. Then, it will be on to the playfield...