Donkey Kong 4 PCB Stacks, Who’s the Guy?

Phetishboy

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Just wondering who repairs the four board stacks these days. Also wondering if it's possible to put a High Score save kit on one. Thanks!
 
Mike's Arcade has it listed in his repair services. Lead time is 3-6 months.


You can also hit up @yaryar at Starbase Alpha Arcade:

 
You can install a save kit. It's just kind of a hassle. On some tkg3 boards, the CPU is soldered, so it would need to be desoldered if that is the case. Then the sound board needs to be relocated to the upper part of the cpu board.

Regarding repairs, a lot of times it is sockets on these TKG3 boardsets. I am not offering repair services right now because I don't have time, but if you wanna trade in your broken set kinda like what andrewb does, I have a working TKG3 boardset. If you are interested shoot me a message.
 
So I have changed out the graphics ROMs at 5H and 5K. I changed out 5K twice as the first 2716 I got looked a little sketchy. The second one came from Steph at hobbyroms. Neither of the chip replacements has fixed what's wrong. In fact, most times they make it worse.

Here's where it started:

IMG_3290.jpeg
After the first 5H and 5K swaps:

IMG_3291.jpeg

After the 2nd 5K swap:

IMG_3289.jpeg
 
I have used Star base Alpha a few time. Flat rate for repairs. I have been very happy with his work and turn around time.
 
What's frustrating is this board works perfectly otherwise and you can play a complete game (at least as far as I can get, 3rd-4th screen), and there are no real glitches other than this color banding and wrong colors on some of the screens. When I look at diagnosis sites online, every one of them shows these same screens and then points to the 2716 graphics ROMS. Having replaced both of them, one of them twice, would lead me to believe there's something else going on. People have mentioned sockets, but having replaced the chips several times and cleaned them, and not seeing any broken solder joints or leg mounts missing, I'm not sure what would be wrong with them. Sounds like sending the board to Starbase Alpha is the way to go.
 
What's frustrating is this board works perfectly otherwise and you can play a complete game (at least as far as I can get, 3rd-4th screen), and there are no real glitches other than this color banding and wrong colors on some of the screens. When I look at diagnosis sites online, every one of them shows these same screens and then points to the 2716 graphics ROMS. Having replaced both of them, one of them twice, would lead me to believe there's something else going on. People have mentioned sockets, but having replaced the chips several times and cleaned them, and not seeing any broken solder joints or leg mounts missing, I'm not sure what would be wrong with them. Sounds like sending the board to Starbase Alpha is the way to go.
It can't hurt to replace the sockets anyway. I had an issue on my radar scope that was fixed by replacing a socket.
 
Agree with Starbase Alpha. He fixed two 4-board stacks for me a year or two ago. An issue popped up on one of them soon after they were returned, and he took it back, reworked, and did extended testing. So great service as well.
 
Also wondering if it's possible to put a High Score save kit on one. Thanks!
I put the braze kit on my 4 board stack. It works fine. The only thing stopping it was a spacing restriction. I got around it by doubling the spacers on the outside board:

1761140010209.png
 
If the ROMs are good, there's only a handful of chips that could be at fault...

The 299s, the 157s, or the NOR.

I only have 2-board schems handy, but it should be pretty easy to track down with the right schematics.
 
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