Donkey Kong Cabaret Restoration

Phetishboy

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The intro paragraph is just a long boring history of how this project started, if you wanna get to the resto, skip it.

So I had been looking for a DK Cabaret for a few years, ever since I saw and missed one at one of the MOMA auctions that sold for $250. I posted want ads, scoured ebay and CL, tried to talk friends out of them, etc. Well about 2.5 years ago, a nice converted one showed up on my Local CL. I saw the ad when it popped up Early in the morning, then was alerted by 2 or 3 different KLOVers from as far away as Chicago about it cuz they knew I was looking. Made a deal with the seller to pick it up, and as very stoked. Well, seller had to change the pick up time, which fell right in the middle of a family reunion I had to attend. We set a different time and away I went. While at the event, I was texted by the seller telling me that sorry, but he decided to sell the game to a local who was able to come pick it up immediately. I thought WTF? How could this happen? Well I knew how, but still thought it sucked ass.

Well, because I was tired of looking, I decided to just build one. After getting measurements and a loaner cab from SuperGunGuru and Smalltownguy respectively, I ended up building my own DK cabaret, which actually turned into my DKjr cabaret with custom art and vinyl:

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While building it, I contacted YodainMN about the DK cabaret he had picked up. He agreed to sell it to me for $225 or so.It was nice, but it had issues. No back door, monitor wasn't working, board wasn't working, a few corners were damaged, and the roof was held on by extra supports that someone had added and attached to the cab with these fine carriage bolts:

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A few months ago, I decided that I better restore this cab. I first removed the brackets and fixed the bolt holes.

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Then I recapped the monitor, but was getting a weird screen:

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I found that I had a bad chip at location 5K (more on that later). Next I was peeling the original DK sticker off when I noticed a perfect Space Demon marquee stuck behind it.

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So then I realized that this had been a factory conversion from SD to DK which was cool. Since I didn't feel like sourcing a SD board and other SD parts, I decided to just restore it as a DK.

Well, earlier this year, I had been bondoing and sanding and bondoing and sanding this cab when I'd get little snippets of time. After the 3rd bondoing session, I pushed it out of the way when I needed to clean my garage and just let it sit.

Fast forward to this past weekend. I decided it was time to finish this little bastard up. A few months ago, I purchased wood grain vinyl from a shop in Hong Kong. I decided to go with a darker walnut print, which was closer to the later DK cabarets. I started with the roof piece. I lined up one edge, then laid it down from left to right, which worked out well. I then trimmed the overhang on the right side.

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I then moved to the sides. The company only sold it in 24" widths, so I really had to be careful lining it up, as I only had 1/4" of overhang on either side, for a length of over 4 feet. After lining it up, I taped it in the middle and put it down from middle to bottom, then from middle to top. I did this on both sides. I then trimmed it. Here is how it looks so far:


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WOW WOW WOW WOW!! That vinyl looks amazing! great job applying it! I really need to get to repainting the black on mine and installing the NOS marquee.

I am going to be following this thread very closely!
 
I kinda got ahead of myself a little. I forgot to tell you about the inside. Well, from building my custom DKjr cabaret, I knew a little of what I was in for inside this cab. These cabs came with a 'coin tower' that was basically a large open face wooden box on a stand that was screwed and glued to the bottom of the cab.

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The open face was towards the front of the cab, behind the coin door and held the coin box:

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The sucky part was that in order to remove the coin door, this tower had to be removed first. Because they also used wood glue to attach it to the floor, removing it was even more sucky than the fact that it had to be removed. Eventually I got it out:

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Well one other weird part of the design was that there was a large void that was formed under the coin box shelf, between the 'legs' of the tower, which were really just the tower sides that extended to the floor. Since the back of the tower was where they mounted the gold box power supply, it had a solid panel that also ran all the way down to the floor. As the void was facing the front of the cab, it was completely blocked from view and from access by the lower part of the kick plate, under the coin door. Basically, whether by design or not, the void is inaccessible from all sides while the tower is mounted in the cabinet.

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Well at least inaccessible by humans. When I removed it, here was what I found where the void had been:

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Do you realize that many people would have just moved this machine into their homes, without ever knowing what was hiding "in the void"? Think about that the next time one of you lazy bastards decides to just move that skanky game from the barn you found it in directly into your game room without wasting time on the pesky cleaning part. Disgusting.

Anyhoo, the rat/mouse urine had penetrated so deep into the wood that the whole upper ply layer basically peeled/crumbled off in several flaky pieces, giving me a blank surface to sand and clean up, making it look like a new floor.
 
Nice work so far. Are sticking with the standard sticker marquee on this? Or putting in a backlit marquee? But I guess the latter would require a new front panel to be cut to lower the speaker hole.

My first thought when seeing the first picture was that the vinyl looked darn close to vinyl on my Dig Dug cabaret. Am I crazy? Did you ever hold this vinyl up to the Dig Dug before you got sold it?

But then I realized that it was all a moot point after you stated it only came in 24" widths......Atari cabarets are quite a bit deeper then that.
 
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Dood. That is fuggin nasty... WTF did you do in there? Thanks alot for the image in my brain now. Thanks, bro

That fuckin dude is just awesome.

"Hey sis, mom said supper's readyiiiieeeeeeeeeeeohhhhhhhhh-my-gawwwwwwwwwwwddoooodenoooooooowaaaaaayy!!!"
 
I can only imagine what my Space Demon cabaret is holding in 'the void.'

*shudder*

You DID order a bunch of that vinyl, right?
 
The sucky part was that in order to remove the coin door, this tower had to be removed first. Because they also used wood glue to attach it to the floor, removing it was even more sucky than the fact that it had to be removed.

Argh!!! I was planning on removing my coin door to paint it! That is way scarier than some mouse bedding.
 
How did the mice even get in there if there's no way in?

I said inaccessible by humans. On either side of the tower, between it and the kickplate, there is about a 5/8" gap. You can't see it from the front as the shelf lip overhangs an extra 3/4 inch to keep coins from falling down there, effectively blocking the view of the void and the gaps from the top.
 
I said inaccessible by humans. On either side of the tower, between it and the kickplate, there is about a 5/8" gap. You can't see it from the front as the shelf lip overhangs an extra 3/4 inch to keep coins from falling down there, effectively blocking the view of the void and the gaps from the top.

Ah. Yeah I would definitely shit there if I was a mouse.
 
And Tighe kills another one. Well, moving on, I still have to get some brown T-molding for this cab. I found a source for a decent replacement molding (if not an exact match for the original) online. The original brown molding was flat in profile and semi-gloss in finish:

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I found the right size and color of molding online, but the profile is slightly rounded and the finish is satin:

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Side by side comparison:

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I am fine with it and would be happy installing it on this machine, if the company that sells it didn't require that I purchase a minimum of 250 feet. Until I can get at least 10 people to commit to buying a machine's worth, I just can't justify buying that much at one time. Until then, I will keep looking or hoping Bill reproduces it within the next month.
 
Another thing I'll have to replace is my CPO. Is has a huge chunk missing out of the front of it. As it is reverse screened plexi, it's near impossible to fix the original.

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Good thing I vectorized the original and can have it reverse printed at any time. I just need to grab one of these and change the colors to the original brown, orange, black and almond colors.

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I killed it??? Hardly. Do you see 10 images and 15 links from me???? When I kill something it is killed. More likely this place is dead. Here I was trying to be all positive, and not say anything that you would consider negative! I do think you are doing a great job as always. Keep it up!
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I sure hope that the flat molding gets reproduced. Remember I posted some flat brown molding in the other thread that just needed to be trimmed with that hardy dandy trimmer. No huge minimum order, and it was flat!

*Runs off to pinside to kill some of Phet's threads there*
 
Here's a shot of the blonde Space Demon woodgrain vs. the later DK stuff:

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I think the stuff I bought was a decent match to the DK stuff. The woodgrain is slightly different, but the color is close:

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Nice work. I'd love to have a DK cabaret. Weird that it was converted in the first place

Well the conversion was done at the factory. Nintendo's Space Demon was a stinker, Donkey Kong was a huge hit. Instead of shipping out a game that would have either sat there or been shipped back, they decided to convert and ship out a game that was a sure winner. Either that, or the demand for DK machines was so great back in '81 that they decided to just rebrand every machine that they had laying around to cash in. Same concept as the Radarscope to Red DK conversions.
 
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