New to the cave....

keithsarcade

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Couldnt pass this up. Saw this listing on CL (yes, every game I own I found on CL) for a working DK for $300. 2 hours away but hell, not a bad price. I contact the seller for more photos and details. Game looks great and he informs me that it has a sound issue. He claims it would crackle after a few minutes of play and then lose sound completely. Well after hearing that I was able to talk him down to $260 and I'm heading towards KC to pick this thing up.

Get there and sure enough, no sound. Everything else checks out aside from no marquee lamp (of course) and a missing monitor bracket. DK goes in the Saturn and its another 2 hours back home.

Rain lets up long enough for me to get it inside. I find that the sound wire had been cut and stripped, not connected to anything. Tap it in and it sounds beautiful. Played it for an hour last night, its been on most of the day and it still sounds great. I can only guess that the guy had this wire stuffed into the connector and had a bad connection. $15 dollars in parts for a new marquee lamp assembly and misc. hardware for a proper monitor mount. So $275 total plus gas and MB has some company now. Wish they were all this cheap & easy.

Has minor glitches (which Ill address later) but looks, plays and sound great (even got a bottle of touch up paint which has already come into play). Also has an 8-way joystick (yuck), well be replacing that pretty soon.

Somewhere down the road, I'd like to find an economical way to have this play both DK and DK Jr., any ideas?
 

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Somewhere down the road, I'd like to find an economical way to have this play both DK and DK Jr., any ideas?

The only way to use both boards,with an original harness,is to switch connectors from one board to the other.
One other option would be to swap the original harness with a DK3 harness and switch from one board to the other via the edge connector.
When using the edge connector you need the rainbow cable that goes from the cpu board to the video board on each board set.
The only other way,which you probably don't want to do,is put a jamma harness and switcher in the cab and use a 2 in 1 switcher to switch games without opening the back up.
I almost forgot you could send your DK to Mikes Arcade in trade for a Double Donkey Kong pcb but beware the sounds are a little off on DK as a DKJR board is used to make it.
By the way nice score.
My DK was jammatized when I got it so I put a 6 in 1 switcher and have 6 boards in it.
 
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Congrat's on the DK score. Now, lets see a video of it on you tube. Who knows.. maybe your wife will take to this game and give the touch screen a break for a while.
 
Congrat's on the DK score. Now, lets see a video of it on you tube. Who knows.. maybe your wife will take to this game and give the touch screen a break for a while.

Whats funny is Centipede is supposed to be her baby and she hasnt touched it since we got the Megatouch. Alli is having a birthday party on Saturday, Ill make a video then.
 
The only way to use both boards,with an original harness,is to switch connectors from one board to the other.
One other option would be to swap the original harness with a DK3 harness and switch from one board to the other via the edge connector.
When using the edge connector you need the rainbow cable that goes from the cpu board to the video board on each board set.
The only other way,which you probably don't want to do,is put a jamma harness and switcher in the cab and use a 2 in 1 switcher to switch games without opening the back up.
I almost forgot you could send your DK to Mikes Arcade in trade for a Double Donkey Kong pcb but beware the sounds are a little off on DK as a DKJR board is used to make it.
By the way nice score.
My DK was jammatized when I got it so I put a 6 in 1 switcher and have 6 boards in it.

Thats a bummer. I didnt care for the sound differences and he states he can only accept DK Jr's in trade (plus $160, yikes). I could get a Nintendo to JAMMA adapter and have a 48-1 with only DK's active, I guess, but I dont see much point when I have a working original boardset. Maybe Ill figure something out later on down the road.
 
Glad you got her,the pcb has a couple dials on the top that i wasn't sure what they were for. All not a biggie but just not what i needed. Still a good buy for $260, i really debated on it. I know you can get her back to perfection. Congrats.
 
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Glad you got her,the pcb has a couple dials on the top that i wasn't sure what they were for. All not a biggie but just not what i needed. Still a good buy for $260, i really debated on it. I know you can get her back to perfection. Congrats.

He said a couple people looked at it already. Also said he had 3 other games that already sold. I guess the sound issue really scared people away from it. He claimed to have received a phone call from another interested party while we were loading it, So I guess I snatched it up just in time.

Are you referring to the video adjustment pots? Those are common in Nintendo games, Mario Bros. also has them. Theres also a third pot on the board nearby to balance out the sound effects.

Only issues I'm having now are very minor graphical glitches (mainly black lines in DK when he jumps in the first level or when he falls in the last level), hell they might be normal for all I know. I did find a couple of damaged ceramic (resistors?), maybe replacing those will fix it?
 

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Man, I really don't want to hate you... But I do. :D Nice score. The t-molding looks mint! :eek: Is it the real-deal original Nintendo t-molding?
 
Man, I really don't want to hate you... But I do. :D Nice score. The t-molding looks mint! :eek: Is it the real-deal original Nintendo t-molding?

Everything is mint. I cant find any blemishes on the bezel and only minor blemishes everywhere else. The T-Molding is rubber, on my MB its hard plastic, which one is original? The side art looks brand new. I can tell you the paint is not original. Its a slightly darker shade than my MB, its flat, and I've already scratched it a little unloading it, exposing the lighter blue underneath. Luckily the seller gave me a snapple bottle (yes, a snapple bottle) full of touch up paint to remedy that.

Honestly, I think this started off as a DK, the converted to another game and back to DK again. There are signs inside the cabinet that suggest the monitor was horizontally mounted at some point (BTW, Sharp XM200N with no burn and a nice picture). All of the monitor mounting holes had been filled in (on the outside at least) and the top mount was missing. I drilled out one hole on each side and fabricated a new mount out of unistrut and angle brackets. I bought it with only 2 bolts on the bottom shelf and the cage resting on the back shelf (thank god this has protection at the neck).

Other evidence I found was 2 serial tags in the back (just like MB). One says TKG-4-UP-US and the other is marked MGS-UP-US. MB also has 2 tags, TKG4-UP-US & TMA1-UP-US. Can anyone decipher these?
 
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I looked on the inside, it looked like it was a vs. cab at one point, thus the gold cage that the pcb is sitting sideways in. I wasn't afraid of the sound, i just was not sure i needed it. the board was laying sideways so maybe i was seeing things on the dial knobs.The joystick wouldn't go up at all when i was there, when he took off the control panel and fliped it over the black button fell out. The power supply had been replaced to the newer style, i did notice that, and the monitor was not a sanyo but still looked good. If you take out the gold cage it should have the slots for the pcb to sit upright in it's spot. I'm happy you got it. I don't buy to resell so i do pass on a lot of good deals on a need and money basis.
 
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