Donkey Kong - no video, repeating "jumpman death" sound

weirdal1968

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Donkey Kong - no video, repeating "jumpman death" sound

A friend is trying to help out a fellow collector who runs a pizza parlor and asked me to look at an upright DK. I've never worked on a Donkey Kong before so aside from the basics (clean & reseat ICs, check fuses, monitor recap & adj and psu voltages) I'm nearly clueless. I've repaired plenty of classic era stuff but this is the first time inside Mario-land.

As the subject says, no video and the jumpman death sound plays constantly. At least the audio amp works. Pretty sure the machine is all original (2 board pcb, monitor, psu).

I've dug around and while I couldn't find any repair logs with similar symptoms, an article mentioned how a bad power supply could prevent the pcb from booting. I'll check the various psu voltages - according to the schems DK uses 5v, 12v and -5v unless I missed one.
 
Had a similar issue with a DK JR. The game is most likely watchdogging (resetting over and over) which means you may simply need to reset the programs ROMs, or there is something with the program ROM circuitry that may need to be repaired.
 
Reseated all socketed chips but haven't run them through the EPROM burner. Given that Nintendo never put labels on their EPROMs, I'm surprised they lasted this long.

Thanks for the pointer on the watchdog. I'll check the reset line for activity.
 
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