First thing Saturday morning, I'm tossing the wife and kid in the car to make a quick 6 hour drive to pick up a Star Wars trilogy. As with most machines, I know its got its good and bad, but I am super excited!

If I go by alpha, my line up will be Star Trek: TNG, Star Wars, and The x-files.

This is a HOU and looms to be in great shape. I cut my newbie teeth on x-files, so I feel great about adding another sega to the stable. I have a speaker left over from stereo modding x-files, so I'll probably do that to it as well.

I gotta grab some z's, I'll have more tomorrow or Sun.

I'm excited with all the threads of people picking up machines lately.

Made it home! Just after midnight. I should have specified, 6 hours there..... 6 hours back! Think San Fran to LA.

Pinball looks in great shape so far, but it's still in the back of the SUV. I'm going to take off a bit of dust from it, then start playing through it. The manual is the pre-production one, that caught me by surprise, so I may end up ordering the final one, I wonder if there are any significant differences. I need to check rom versions as well.

This is where is get fun!

So, to recap, current have X-files and ST: TNG, and SWT is the new kid in town. What next? Is it obscene to already be thinking what's next? Lost is Space? Starship Troopers? or look for an Addams family for the wife?

Thank you for the all kind thoughts, okay, time to get it out of the truck and start working on it!

Yesterday was just one of those days.... We just moved to CA from Minnesota, and my basement mancave is a distant memory. So, we do have a pretty big garage, which is now where the pins will reside. Nothing is set up, and still have tons of boxes.... So, after moving boxes and things around, about 5pm yesterday, I got SWT in and booted. The cabinet, plastics, and playfield look fantastic. The pin was described as Mint, and I think it's pretty close. It doesn't appear to have much wear on it at all, under the playfield was disturbingly clean That being said, there was a layer of grime on the top of the backglass, and the playfield glass did not want to slide off. Looks like the playfield glass and lockbar absorbed a lot of soda, or guiness...

There was some battery corrosion, but it was limited to the battery box, and none had made it on the CPU board.

So, I start playing it, and I notice that the ball is not loading in the X-Wing. I pull off the turret cover and discover two broken wires for the magnet slide. One of which had a really crappy repair done on it. So, a few minutes with some solder, and it was up and firing! It's such a cool effect, I was delighted.

The only weirdness, is that the ball autolaunches constantly, so the only time I've ever touched the launch button is to fire the x-wing cannon, and that works fine.

If anyone has any ideas on the auto-launcher, please let me know. The roms are out of date, so I've got those on order as well as a new rubber kit. The plastic ramps look dirty, but not really used or grooved. Once the rubber kit arrives, then I'll really tear into it.

To JWS64, feel free to ping me any time on my x-files. As my first pin, I learned a lot from it. I did install some LED's around the playfield, but not a total conversion. When I first got it, the area in front of the cabinet was really torn up. It did have the metal plate, however, the plate was worn through! I was able to order the replacement plate from my local Happ guy, who had to order it from Stern. When I pulled the old metal up, the playfield was extremely gouged and my guess is that whoever did the metal plate fix, didn't fill the playfied as the service bulletin said to. So, I borrowed some wood filler from my model rocketry kit(don't get me started on the rockets ), filled the playfield and put the new metal plate. Looked a ton better.

Now the maget had never worked and I was able to trace it to a blown transistor on the power/io driver board (Rev F I believe). I took it a great repair guy at Liebermans in Bloomington, MN and he fixed it nice. Now I have full functionality, and I must say, that magnet is super cool, and really adds to the challenge.

Back to the main topic, I'll get some pics out soon!

Thanks all,

Glenn