Donkey Kong II Kit issues

JamBurglar

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I got a D2K kit recently. It works okay sometimes but other times it glitches. It seems to have a hard time with the original DK. When I first installed it, DK was entirely unplayable. It would freeze as DK went up the ladder, I start getting garbage and then it would just crash with sound glitches (imagine the sound of jumpman dying over and over and over with intermittend jumps, stomps, etc.) Sometimes I'll get graphics glitches like, DK will stop animating, but he'll float up to the top of the screen. Or DK will just appear in random spots on the board. Sometimes it would restart itself and go back to the bootup screen. Sometimes, DK will play just fine for a while and then it will somehow switch into D2K mid game. For instance, last night I was on a game, I got to level 4-5 (the blue rivets at the end of level 4) and when I beat the level Kong catches the girder (like he does at the end of D2K) and all of a sudden I'm playing D2K. The high score from DK will then be the high score on D2K. Also, ff I just turn it on in DK mode and let it sit it will automatically revert to the D2K. I've had games where it plays DK normally and everything seems fine.

D2K, on the other hand, seems to play just fine.

Everything on my machine is stock with one exception. I've got a switching power supply. I don't know if that could be causing the issue or not.

Any suggestions?
 
It may not be seated properly. Did you pull the board out of the machine to install it? I found it easiest with this kit and my DKjr freeplay kit to pull the board out of the machine. Seperate the 2 boards and put the board on a piece of cardboard on a hard surface to give it a solid backing to push on without damaging anything. - Barry
 
It may not be seated properly. Did you pull the board out of the machine to install it? I found it easiest with this kit and my DKjr freeplay kit to pull the board out of the machine. Seperate the 2 boards and put the board on a piece of cardboard on a hard surface to give it a solid backing to push on without damaging anything. - Barry

I did pull the board to seat it. I did not seperate the two boards though.

The legs on the daughterboard are a little thicker and a little longer than the z80 legs. The daughter card didn't snap in but I put good pressure on it. I'm afraid if I put more pressure on it it will break. I'll post some pictures of how it's seated.
 
I did pull the board to seat it. I did not seperate the two boards though.

The legs on the daughterboard are a little thicker and a little longer than the z80 legs. The daughter card didn't snap in but I put good pressure on it. I'm afraid if I put more pressure on it it will break. I'll post some pictures of how it's seated.

That's why you need to separate the boards to get pressure without damage. - Barry
 
That's why you need to separate the boards to get pressure without damage. - Barry

Thanks for the help Barry.

The daughterboard feels like it's in there securely, but maybe I'm underestimating the pressure I need. I've put some pretty decent pressure on there already and I'm getting no indication it will go in farther. I guess I could try plyers or something. Anywho, I figured it was worth posting some pictures of how it's in there now.

D2K%20Kit%20Install%20%28what%20is%20wrong%29%201.jpg


D2K%20Kit%20Install%20%28what%20is%20wrong%29%202.jpg


D2K%20Kit%20Install%20%28what%20is%20wrong%29%203.jpg
 
I found out that installing a D2K kit can produce otherwise unseen board issues. While it's possible it could simply be a seating issue (doubt it as usually the game won;t fire up) a bad Z80 proc and/or socket, I would wonder if you've got PCB issues else where.

I had a PCB set that was perfect and as soon as I installed that kit I started having weird shit happening. I contact Jeff and he was befuddled as well. Eventually the board really lost it's cookies and I got the board replaced and low and behold everything worked perfectly.

BTW - doubt switching PS would cause that unless the +5 was low ;)

And let me add - tunr the DK on for about 20 minutes. Power down and turn back on. Does the Brasington HS kit report any bad memory?
 
I found out that installing a D2K kit can produce otherwise unseen board issues. While it's possible it could simply be a seating issue (doubt it as usually the game won;t fire up) a bad Z80 proc and/or socket, I would wonder if you've got PCB issues else where.

I had a PCB set that was perfect and as soon as I installed that kit I started having weird shit happening. I contact Jeff and he was befuddled as well. Eventually the board really lost it's cookies and I got the board replaced and low and behold everything worked perfectly.

BTW - doubt switching PS would cause that unless the +5 was low ;)

And let me add - tunr the DK on for about 20 minutes. Power down and turn back on. Does the Brasington HS kit report any bad memory?

I'll double check the bad memory thing. So far the HS kit is reporting everything is OK, even after it's been on for hours and I re-start.
 
I went to turn on my DK the other night and started getting glitches. I pulled the D2k kit and reinstalled the z-80 and it's been working fine so far. Pull yours and see of the game goes back to normal. - Barry
 
Well, bit the bullet and went all out last night. I pulled the board, removed the video board from the PCB bracket, set it on cardboard, firmly reseated the daughterboard on the videoboard (after firmly reseating the z80 to the daughterboard) and then reassebled everything.

No dice. Same problem. D2K is stable but DK won't play. When playing DK, it either glitches or wants to automatically revert to D2K midgame. It will even revert back to D2K in attract mode. I pulled the D2K kit all together and reinstalled my z80 directly onto the PCB and DK plays just fine stock.

So, I gather that (1) something is faulty with the D2K itself, or (2) something is faulty with the way the daughterboard is conecting. I do know that when it's seated firmly in there it simply doesn't work right.

Anybody else have any ideas? Thanks for all the help and suggestions so far!
 
Good idea but I bought the game as a D2K kit (as opposed to an add on to the high score kit) so I only have the D2K chips that came with the kit.

I think Steve at arcadeshop is going to check it out for me. Really cool of him to do that! I'm going to mail him my PCB with the kit so he can test everything. I'll let people know how it turns out.
 
I'm just bumping this again to see if anybody has any ideas:

Despite what I do, D2K will play fine, DK will not.

What I've tried so far:

1. Reverted from switching power supply back to PP-7B-no change
2. New harness-no change
3. New z80 socket-no change
4. New z80-no change
5. Sent kit to another member-Kit works in his machine, does not work in mine
6. Sent entire board and kit to arcade shop-Steve says it works on his test bench (although I wasn't able to confirm that he tried gameplay and you wouldn't be able to tell unless you tried to play DK.)
7. I've tried seating the kit 6 ways to sunday-it always plays d2k fine and dk won't play right.

Also, all of my boards (DK 4-board set, DK 2-board set, and DK Jr.) work fine when set up stock. It's only when I put the kit in my DK 2-board set that I have any issues.

I'm just totally baffled. Could it be my transformer?
 
Do you have any other board roms you could try swapping in? I'm not sure what all is replaced by the kit, but perhaps there's some strange incompatibility between the kit and your romset (due to a little bit-rot, or something).

-Jim
 
I think your machine is cursed, and should be given away immediately. I, of course, will offer to take it off your hands and rid you of said curse, free of charge!
Just kidding :D Have you tried it in your 4-board set too? Or is yours one of the ones with the soldered Z80?

edit:
Do you have any other board roms you could try swapping in? I'm not sure what all is replaced by the kit, but perhaps there's some strange incompatibility between the kit and your romset (due to a little bit-rot, or something).

I could be wrong, but I think Jeff has the DK code on the new chip, because he didn't want to have to take into account different revisions on different boardsets, since he added code for high score save/freeplay, etc
 
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I think your machine is cursed, and should be given away immediately. I, of course, will offer to take it off your hands and rid you of said curse, free of charge!
Just kidding :D Have you tried it in your 4-board set too? Or is yours one of the ones with the soldered Z80?

edit:


I could be wrong, but I think Jeff has the DK code on the new chip, because he didn't want to have to take into account different revisions on different boardsets, since he added code for high score save/freeplay, etc

I'll send it right over!

Yeah, the 4-board set is one of the old ones with the soldered Z80. It's a early DK (TKG-3) so I've got the old style (black) power transfomer as well.

I also understood that the DK code was on the D2K kit, which explains why if you put the kit on an old boardset it fixes the ladder "cheat".

I'm going to try to check the +5v on the board this week. I did a quick search on that and I'm sort of confused by all the pin-out lingo. Anybody have link for "checking your +5v for dummies"?
 
I'll send it right over!

Yeah, the 4-board set is one of the old ones with the soldered Z80. It's a early DK (TKG-3) so I've got the old style (black) power transfomer as well.

I also understood that the DK code was on the D2K kit, which explains why if you put the kit on an old boardset it fixes the ladder "cheat".

I think all the 4-board sets are TKG-3's (not sure about the Radarscope conversions, those might be TKG-2). But yeah, the early ones had the Z80 soldered on. Mine has it socketed, but it's in a cocktail. Don't know when it was built, but it definitely doesn't have the ladder cheat, and has "Nintendo of America" on the title screen.
 
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