Jake,
I'm with Dokert on this. Definitely shoot Scott an e-mail. He's a good guy and there's a outside chance he's seen what's going on on your boards before. Plus if anyone is qualified to check it out it's him.
Good luck.
ERIC
BTW: My D2K/DK kit works awesome...just rubbin' it in
I've actually already e-mailed Scott and Jeff Kulczycki. Based on my description of the issues Scott and Jeff didn't have any answers but said it was possibly a faulty kit. They suggested that I contact Steve about a replacement. I had previously sent my entire board, with the kit, to Steve at Arcadeshop, who said he thought it was my Z80 socket. He replaced the z80 socket and said it was working,
BUT, I could never get a clear answer from him on whether he actually tested DK gameplay. He said "We ran the board for a few days and didn't see any problems." It sounded like he just set up the board on the test bench, let it run in attract for a day or so, and assumed everything was working. Well, sometimes the game would switch to D2K in attract, but sometimes it wouldn't, and if you just glance over to confirm that attract mode is up and running you likely wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary. I did mention that to Steve but it he never confirmed he had looked into that. Giving Steve the benefit of the dobut, it's always possible tthat the board and kit worked fine on Steve's setup but is flaking out on my setup for some reason.
Anyway, when Steve sent the board back (with the kit still installed by him and presumably working on his end) I reinstalled it on my machine it had the same problematic symptoms. Since Steve checked out everything for free, and had no obligation to do anything for me, I didn't want to press him any longer about the depth of his testing. At that point I thought it was my switching power supply. I put in an original PP-7B and it still had same symptoms. I put in the Dockert/Flagg harness and it still had same symptoms.
At that point I fiugred it had to be the kit and that Steve just missed the symptoms in his testing. That's when I e-mailed Scott and Jeff. They seemed stumped and said it might be the kit. I was going to ask Steve to replace the kit, but before I did that I wanted to make SURE it was the kit, and not my board (since Steve had already gone out of his way to help me.) That's when I sent the kit to DogP to test in his machine. It worked fine in his machine. He verified that DK gameplay worked.
So, at this point I'm thinking it's one of two things. Either it's been my board from day one, and Steve just missed the problem because he wasn't testing game play, or there is something up with the other components on my machine that is making this thing flake. The only thing I haven't swapped out is my transformer and monitor. I seriously doubt it's the monitor. All my other PCBs work with the transformer. That leads me to belive it's the board or something with how the board is interacting with the kit. It is odd that my board works fine without the kit installed.
I keep second guessing myself and thinking I haven't installed the kit firmly enough but I have tried to seat the thing a zillion times. I've seperated the board from the tray and seated it as firmly as possible. I've tried tilting it in any way I can think of, seating it evenly but only 3/4 down in the socket, etc. I either get the same symptoms or typical z80 garbage (meaning the kit isn't fully seated).
So, I'm fully stumped. If I had another DK board I would cross check it in my machine but I only have one DK boardset with the seated Z80 and I don't want to do anything destructive to my original 4-board set with a soldered z80.
By the way, glad you got your board working, is it the TKG2? Did the schematics I sent help?
