Vs. Unisystem Back to Donkey Kong

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So this is the start of my first real arcade project. I bought two vs. Unisystems from Ken (fatsgt) with the intention to return one back to a Donkey Kong (my favourite and arguably the most iconic!). After taking delivery last week of the two cabinets, I was itching to begin (I've been sat on most of the DK parts for over a year now!).

So this was our starting point:



Excitebike will definitely being taking pride of place in my other Unisystem, but I'm afraid I need this cab for DK. I began by doing the part that frightening me the most... Swapping the orientation of the monitor. All bezel and marquee out, I began to strip out and unplug ready for the big pull:



At this point I realised what the bolts were in the coin door panel. I'd assumed they were for an old coin door brace, but turns out some nobber at some point has taken their anger out on the front "kick" panel:



That'll need fixing (either replacing the whole front or coaxing it back into shape with glue and clamps), but we're just doing a test fit/ dry run of DK first. So after a few nail biting moments with the monitor out, rotated and back in, I reconnected the control panel and fired her up (just to make sure I hadn't knackered anything in the process):



Cue no sound! Luckily, I'd just forgotten to reconnect the speaker (that'll do it!). Right, so let's start stripping out the Unisystem loom:



Loom out (luckily nothing bodged or broken), so I then put in my MikesArcade Double Donkey Kong and connected up using the DK loom I'd bought from KLOV last year:



Having never done anything with arcades before, this lead to a lot of head scratching and checking the manuals. As this is technically a DKJR board, the supplied rainbow cable negates the use of the 10P CLK cable. Adding to this, I'm assuming (haven't tried it) that the original PSU has blown at some point as there is a new switching power supply inside.

I have to admit, at this point I was expecting to flick the power and encounter either a snap, crackle or pop, but to my amazement, I was greeted with that beautiful start up song and this:



Success! But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I'd noticed when I connected up the control panel, that one of the wires on the control panel side was missing a pin. I traced it through the loom to discover it was connected to the right hand switch on the joystick. After starting it up, I assumed I'd have no right movement, and I was correct! Not bad though that this was the only mishap I'd encountered.

So I took the control panel off to have a look at my options. Luckily, the DK loom I bought, also came with a control panel loom, ironically labelled "one pin needs mending". Turns out it was the same pin on this loom (I'm assuming it's a common failure being a pin out on its own on the end of a connector). So I decided to "borrow" one of the other cables from the spare loom entirely and piggy back it onto my control panel:



So the orange cable is a temporary fix until I get the soldering iron out!

And that's where I'm upto today. The little one didn't want to play in "daddy's stinky garage" anymore and it's my wedding anniversary today, so we're now getting ready to go out. Hopefully when I put the control panel in tomorrow, all will be well and Jumpman will actually be able to move right (pretty key in Donkey Kong)
 
No pictures (of the DK) from today, but my fix (bodge) on the control panel loom did the job so now Jumpman can walk right!

I also screwed the brackets for the PCB to the cabinet to support it properly (another KLOV purchase last year).

The joystick needs some work, but I've got a MikesArcade new one to go in for this coming weekend as we're having a BBQ and games day with some friends. Once that's finished, I'll start stripping the cab down ready for repair and repaint.

An emergency repair was also needed on the base of my other Unisystem as the front panel was off when it arrived and it then went from bad to worse:



A few (16!) headless nails later and the base is back strong again. I think I'll rebuild the base when I get to restoring this cab as the timber has seen better days
 
Aren't these originally DK or Popeye cabs that were converted to Vs cabs? I thought dedicated UniSystem cabs were gray and had the speaker under the marquee?
 
Aren't these originally DK or Popeye cabs that were converted to Vs cabs? I thought dedicated UniSystem cabs were gray and had the speaker under the marquee?

Yeah. It's pretty common to see DK and popeye's converted to something else. Mine was a RoboCop when I bought it.
 
Well here it is, fully back to a DK. Leaving it like this for a BBQ and some games this weekend with friends, but then I'm going to strip it out to start restoring the cab:



The mini DK next to it is my daughters. A guy in the UK builds them (currently has a 60in1 inside)
 
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So the control panel tinkering was my job for this evening. The joystick that was in the CP wasn't particularly smooth anymore, but I had a replacement complete joystick from MikesArcade that I planned to use.

This turned out to be a complete strip down as I couldn't get parts of the old joystick to budge, so at one point I had got to this:



You can see the collection of tools I went through to get to this point! I also had to remove the CPO, and that was nice underneath
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(I'm assuming Coca Cola!) :



Then luckily I was on to the nice new shiny bits (my tool of choice for removing the C clip was a perfectly sized kitchen knife
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:



After a quick re-assemble (and clean), I had a complete control panel again:



The only issue I had was that the clear plastic circle that was supposed to sit above the CPO wouldn't fit. I don't know whether the joystick shaft is too short, but fitting it and assembling, completely compressed the joystick's spring. Something to look at another day...
 
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