Two new games, two (hopefully) easy questions

More Cowbell

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I just picked up an Asteroids and a DK cocktail. My questions...
1) The Asteroids sound seems low. I like the classic sounds of this game almost more than any other. Is there a way to crank the volume up? I tried the pot in the coin door but it's already on 11.
2) DK plays great and everything sounds fine except for the dying noise. The rolling bweep bwoop sound is silent when Mario dies. Any ideas what could cause this?
 
check the board itself for a white round dial thats the volume pot .turn it to get a little more sound.hopeully this will help for hte asteroids as for the Dk it might be a sound rom thats out or going out. check to make sure that all your roms are firmly set .Im not to sure that this is the prob but it wont hurt to check.
 
Dang, I couldn't find the volume pot anywhere. There were a couple of black pots but I don't think that was it. Anyone have a picture or a general vicinity? I figured the DK sound issue was a bad rom. Anyone know which rom might house that sound?
 
asteroids does not have a volume pot on its pcb... Volume pot in the door could be dirty. try a different speaker. Maybe recap the audio reg. It might have the wrong audio reg in the cabinet. I know there is a volume issue between asteroids and deluxe..


I am sure some nintendo expert will chime in. I did not think DK had a volume pot on the pcb. I thought the 2 white pots on the DK pcb control position on the screen.

maybe you can find your DK solution on mikes web page..
http://www.mikesarcade.com/arcade/repairs/dkong.html
 
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As I recall Donkey Kong used a mixture of digital sound effects from a chip and analog oscillators to generate the sounds. So it's possible to have a problem with the analog circuitry and loose a sound, while others worked.

I never had to repair it, but if you look at MAME they use WAV files for a number of the sounds that were recorded from a real machine. This is because of the analog stuff. You might be able to use the wav files to see if it's an analog sound or digital sound, if you are still having Donkey Kong missing sound.

Also note that the audio amplifier board is on the monitor (at least it was in my case with an original 20EZ.) My cap kit for the monitor did not have the ones for the audio board, and it wasn't until I recapped the audio board on the monitor that my sound worked. If you haven't, it might be a good idea to recap the audio amp board. It's on the side of the monitor frame as I remember.

The volume for it might be on the monitor. If the cocktail uses the same monitor as the upright.
 
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I just checked MAME with the samples removed and that sound is there. Some of the sounds that are apparently analog are the DK stomping, the walk sound, and the jumping sound. Those all work on my machine so it must be something related to a digital sound chip. I'll try reseating the chips and see if that fixes it.

BTW, this sounded the most promising of the fixes on mikesarcade since the grin is there in MAME as is the dying sound which leads me to think that it could be a bad chip...

Problem: missing grin sound during into
I don't know what else to call this sound, but after Kong climbs the girders and stomps on them to break them all, he grins and you hear a kind of heee, heee, heee sound. Anyway, it's a digital sound. To make a long story short, I finally changed the sound EPROM at 3F and that fixed the problem, Kong is now grinning away and you can hear him again.
Solution: replace bad EPROM at 3F on the CPU board.
 
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Now is the missing sound the laughing "duh-nuh, duh-nuh, du-nuh?" after he stomps on the girders? I always recall hearing that sound when playing it. And I never noticed any missing sounds when playing my 60-in-1 side-by-side. It sounded different, but nothing missing as far as I could tell.

But there is a balance pot on the game board set that sets the mix of the analog and digital sounds- it may have been touched or rattled in the move. I think the balance pot is on the 4th board (the sound board)- near the top. The sound board is the smallest of the 4 boards and the far right side of the cabinet. This pot is not near the two black pots on the top of the PCB. It is also NOT the same pot as the volume pot, which is next to the monitor. Also, one thing to note... the DKII kit replaces some of the original roms, so it's possible it may sound slightly different than what was originally in the machine. And it's also possible that replacing the PCB ROMs may not fix the issue at all. Maybe the kit is to blame? You can always remove the kit from the z80 chip and then take the z80 off the DKII kit, and place it back in its original socket- to see if there's any change in the sound.

Here's a thread about someone adjusting that pot.

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=23395

And here's a picture I took- it's the white round dial in the top left corner of the PCB.


Donkey Kong II installed by mhanlen1, on Flickr

As far as Asteroids goes, I actually turned it down from when I first got it because it was too loud. The only thing is, I played it in a quiet room, so it didn't have to compete with the attract mode of the other machines. I know the sound peg isn't easy to turn, so you may try with a pair of pliers, if you haven't already.

Had I known about this thread earlier, I would have responded, but I normally only get to check KLOV once a day. Feel free to call me.
 
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Mark, u da man! Never thought to try pliers with Asteroids, just figured it was all the way up since it wasn't turning. Got it turned up and it sounds great! I tried the pot on DK, no change. Pressed in the roms, no change. Messed with the wires out of the sound board, worked! Must have just been a loose connector or wire. I got it all squared away and now it's 100%. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Hope things are going well with you.
 
Great to hear man. I've had that PCB in and out of the machine so many times, and I forgot to tell you to make sure all the connectors are snug. There are a lot of connections, and I've encountered missing characters and sounds, that tunred out to be a cable that needed snugging. That white video cable that runs over the top of the PCB can be a little touchy too, FYI.

Anyway, glad to hear they're up and running. I was a little worried after reading this, as I was pretty anal about how well they worked.
 
Yeah, it seems to be that white connector at the top of the sound board. As I was messing with it while the machine was in attract mode, the sound of Mario dying just happened, he hadn't even died on screen. Fired up a game and it worked. Weird, but now I know to make sure they're all good and snug. You did a great job restoring both of these machines, I'm lucky to have them. Thanks for the follow up, that's real customer service. :)
 
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