(Tomcat is currently in my brother's gameroom, so I don't have a picture of it, but I do have a movie of it I made when I first bought it. Click here to see it [requires RealPlayer])
One day my brother came over, real excited that he found someone locally that sells video games and pinball machines. We hopped in his car and drove to the guy's shop, and my life has never been the same.
I wanted to look at the video games, but I never made it past the pinball machines. He had dozens of pinball machines ready to play. For free. It was my childhood wish come true.
After about an hour and a half of playing every machine he had, I just couldn't walk out of there without handing the guy a check. The best machine he had (that I could afford) was F-14 Tomcat.
I received this machine in good order. The playfield had some worn paint and there were some cracks in the back glass, but everything worked, and worked well.
For about two weeks.
Then the machine started resetting during the middle of games. This was the first pin I had ever bought, so since I knew nothing about these machines, I called the dealer I bought it from. He said to try replacing the batteries in the backbox. While trying to pry the batteries out of the holder, the spacer between the battery contact and the PCB contact broke, so it would no longer hold a battery.
Given the orientation of the batteries and using my continuity tester, I found the two pins that actually supplied power to the PCB. I went to Radio Shack and bought a 4-battery holder, soldered a wire between the leads of one of the spaces since I only needed three batteries, mounted the battery holder to the side of the backbox and ran wires from the battery holder to where the batteries used to go.
About 8 months later, once I started really getting into pinball machines, I found that that should be done anyway, so battery acid doesn't eat up the PCB. Guess I just got lucky on that one.
About two weeks after replacing the batteries, the general illumination lights went out. They'd flicker on occasionally, but for the most part, they were out. I called the dealer I bought from again (yes, there are advantages to buying from a local dealer!) and he sent out a tech to look at it. It turned out that the plug that connects the GI wiring to the PCB was fried (which it turns out is common in this machine and many others from the same time). So I got a new plug and got the GI working again. For about a year.
Then the second plug got fried too. Basically what's happening (as I understand it) is that there's too much current going through the plug. I replaced all the 44 lamps with 47's, but that didn't help. Currently, the GI lights are connected to the PCB with alligator jumpers, until I get around to soldering the wires directly to the PCB.
I finally did get around to soldering new wires directly to the PCB. I'm not that good at soldering small electronics, so I'm fortunate all the GI pins go to the same place. The new wires seem to work great.