A quick Donkey Kong Restore - Arcade Icons

Griffin

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A few weeks back I had a DK pop on CL about 10 mins from my house. I wasn't looking for another project, but Nintendo cabinets are always fun to work on so I called the guy on the off chance he still had it. He replied and said it was still there so I arranged to go straight from the office.

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The guy had inherited the cab from his mother who had passed away a few weeks earlier and had it in her trailer 'for ages'. Apart from being covered in stickers, a base made of two 2x4s, missing the marquee and top bracket it really wasn't in bad shape and was working.

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We worked out a fair price and I threw it in my car.
 
A quick trip home I unloaded the cab into the arcade and took a better look at it.

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The blue was in reasonably good shape, no chipping except for one piece right down on the bottom left hand side.

The game was fully working and the monitor looked strong and sharp but it did have the usual collapse on the left side of the screen.

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I was off to CAX on the weekend of the 17th so it was a good opportunity to pick up the missing pieces I needed for the marquee.

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Mylstar brought me a NOS top bracket (Thanks Man) and I picked up a slightly scratched and gummed up marquee for a cheap $15.
 
I ordered the correct starter and bulb for the original Nintendo fitting from topbulb which worked out to be about $12 or so inc the shipping.

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You can see the scratches in the bargain bin marquee, but it's obviously a huge improvement over it not being there at all

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Cleanup time!

About 10 rags, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some Novus 2 later I managed to get rid of all the grime and dried on glue from the various areas of the cab. Then I replaced all the old yellowed t-molding with nice crispy white Tru-flat.

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The coin door had lots of really crappy 100 year old dried parcel tape glue all down the left hand side, but the paint was good underneath. So more rubbing alcohol and a new lock and it's looking just fine now.

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The saddest part about this machine is that someone took the Donkey Kong logo from the side art and stuck it across the front of the speaker panel THEN proceeded to try and cut away the excess vinyl with a blade, cutting into the blue coat below :mad: I'm not sure how well I will be able to repair that, it really sucks as it's front and center on the cab. We'll see what I can come up with.
 
Here you can see the wonderful base that somebody made by nailing two pieces of 2x4 to the bottom of the cab with some giant nails!!! :eek:

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The original base is completely gone, no doubt ripped clean off the cab, but there are at least still wheels on the back. I'll have to build a new one.
 
Time to get inside the cab and start cleaning up in there. Everything is untouched inside, not one cable tie out of place, but of course there's 25 years of grime and dust in there.

Pulled the Sanyo 20-EZY, man oh man is that thing dirty!!!

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I try to only ever use a dry painters brush when cleaning off electronic parts, I've never been a huge fan of using water if I can avoid it, and when you're just dealing with fine dry dust it actually does an amazing job.

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The screen hardly has any burn at all and cleaned up very nice with the dry brushing and then some windex on a rag for the glass...

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The 52 billion cable management guides, screws and ties seemed untouched on the monitor, so either this is a great survivor or whoever did the last rebuild was extremely meticulous about re-threading everything back perfectly.

Gave the chassis the same good old dry brush treatment and it came up looking great, ready for a recap using one of Ian Kellogg's amazing cap kits.

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I really can't praise Ian enough for the work he puts into these kits, every single cap is labeled on an easy to read strip. Using my Hacko FR-700 desoldering gun I had all the caps removed, replaced, soldered and clipped within 30 minutes.

Everything finished and put back together

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Not bad for just over half an hour of work
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Upload a video AI, I love watching restore series! Also hows the Starwars going?
 
Upload a video AI, I love watching restore series! Also hows the Starwars going?

I might, life has been a bit crazy this last month or so. Star Wars is close to completion, I'm waiting on some mathbox PROMs to arrive that I hope will fix my graphics issues with my board.

Went through the interior of the cab this morning and cleaned it all out ready for the monitor to go back in. Trouble is I have to wait for the repro art to put on the blank left side before I can put all the bolts back and then the monitor can go back in.

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... so I arranged to go straight from the office.

... and I threw it in my car.

Sure is pretty lookin'. Keepin' it?

Though two things are buggin' me.
1. You work? I thought you lived off your wife's income.
2. You were able to put this in a car? What type of car? (Not a koolmoe miata, I'm sure) LOL

:D
 
Sure is pretty lookin'. Keepin' it?

Putting it up for trade locally, I already have a fully restored DK with DKII kit, maybe I can get a nice Joust or something similar in trade.

1. You work? I thought you lived off your wife's income.

I'm in IT, a network administrator

2. You were able to put this in a car? What type of car? (Not a koolmoe miata, I'm sure) LOL

GMC Arcadia, it's huge inside with all the seats folded flat, I've had a 720 in it no problem
 
Time to get inside the cab and start cleaning up in there. Everything is untouched inside, not one cable tie out of place, but of course there's 25 years of grime and dust in there.

Pulled the Sanyo 20-EZY, man oh man is that thing dirty!!!

13754275_1065966323497226_2190697227078018906_n.jpg


I try to only ever use a dry painters brush when cleaning off electronic parts, I've never been a huge fan of using water if I can avoid it, and when you're just dealing with fine dry dust it actually does an amazing job.

13669592_1065989926828199_9170912844184662283_n.jpg


The screen hardly has any burn at all and cleaned up very nice with the dry brushing and then some windex on a rag for the glass...

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I introduce all my new machines to my low power leaf blower outside before i bring them inside. another thing i do is unbolt the power supply and flip it over.. just in case.
Ive had pennies, screws and washers and goblins fall out of those .
 
I a little more work on this over the weekend...

New base for the cab, nothing fancy just 2x4s with pocket screws and wood glue.

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Ripped off the ghetto wood blocks that were nailed to the bottom of the cab and installed the new base

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