Repairing The PCB & Monitor In An Upside-Down Nintendo Donkey Kong Arcade Machine Someone Brought Us 

It must be the Australian version

I love it! " Leave all the dirt." I would have messed that up. Excellent work guys

I found a 1981 Donkey Kong cab at Goodwill for $125, same thing .. .played, but folded. Cap kit and rebuilt joystick made it good as new. But ... I cleaned all the dirt. LOVE your channel. I just repaired my '71 Gottlieb Playball pin from watching your vids.

Only a handful of upside down Donkey Kongs were built and they're extremely valuable! X-D

I love how these classic consoles were pretty repairable and straightforward. It seems almost everything has a pre-planned expiration date nowadays. Thank you for the video and for keeping these gems alive.

Erasing the original chip and then reburning it reminds me of an antique car joke my Dad told me about "original air" inside of a tire.

Ah, one of the very rare Australian Donkey Kong cabs I see... ;-)

That’s going to be a hard play.that way up. But joe was making a great job of it. Big 👍.

I have a DK cabinet with the D2K add-on and DKJR on a switcher. It's my prized possession and all the references in the Mario movie just make me love it even more.

Joe, from your voice, I always thought you were older. Watching you get up and down off that floor, you are a young man! Congrats on your flexibility!

Hearing Donkey kong fire up is going to make me listen to my Bunkner and Garcia album... The family will be so happy with me.

I needed a good laugh! This made my day guys. Thanks for repairing my jr monitor. It works great joe !

Great repair as always there! Guess Donkey Kong was either jumping up and down too much or throwing the barrels too hard to flip the cabinet upside down. 😆

Those metal covers you're not returning to monitors needs to be put back. It's not a radiation shield, like what's on the yoke, but it is a Faraday cage, which protects the electronics from the verry EM fields being produced by the yoke, and external sources, as well. Thanks for the video. Was a fun one.

Very nice video. I agree something was mashing the power cord between that board on the cabinet and something. I worked alot with EProms, and there's no logical reason why writing the program to a chip twice would be any better or different. At the same time, there's a fair bit of superstition and those things are temperamental, so if you have a specific way of doing things when programming chips that always works for you, keep with it! I would've blown the dust out and probably broken something! But your 39 minute video should've been ONE minute longer. "Give us a thumbs up for taking the trouble to film it. (Thank you) And don't foget my brother Donnie...."

I don't know what happened - I finished the board by detatching all the girders only this time not just Donkey Kong ended up on his head the whole machine did! 😂

Love the trying to erase and re-burn the chip. Originality maintained!

I do enjoy watching the Magic happen, working with his hands to bring back classic games from the grave, nothing can replace the actual sticking a coin in to play a game.. Its something that reproductions and emulators can't simulate nostalgia..

Jeez, Joe. I've never seen the second screen. I could never even get past the first ladder. But in my own defense I rarely had more than a dollar to play arcade games with. Parents thought it was a waste of time and money and didn't have the patience to wait.

the contents of that EPROM appear to have slowly erased over time; all the bad bytes had bits that were supposed to be 0's but had become 1's over time. (i.e. 00 was 80, etc). it might not be a bad idea to reburn all of them since the last time they were programmed was 30+ years ago most likely. you can generally just reburn the same data on top of the existing data if it's bit rot (all errors are 0's that turned to 1's) or if the data matches and there were no errors.

JOE is so specific. When he tells us what's wrong. With the machine.❤

LOL "Leave all the dirt exactly where it is"

Ok Ok thats an Aussie DK they arrive here like that all the time,you should see the mess the pinballs do ! .....LOL

I enjoy washing the entire monitor in the driveway to see the neighbor's reaction.

I understand why it is upside down. The monitor is the heaviest part and the cabinet is top heavy. I bought a cabinet yesterday and that sucker was heavy. It was in the guys basement with narrow steps and a hairpin turn at the top to get out the door. I tried pulling with an appliance dolly with "stair climbers" and couldn't get it up first step. That moment was the point I was contemplating life choices. He called his neighbor to help. He wasn't cancelling the sale!! The neighbor pulling and two of us lifting and pushing got it out. Gouged the trim panel on the door due to poor steering.... From ground level, the seller made me roll it out of the house. My arms are still aching from holding the monitor weight steady. Picking up from bottom back seemed logical. After I got home, picking up from front top seems to distribute weight better. It sits in my garage currently and plays well. Generic 60-1 card and controllers. Cabinet, monitor and Chou power supply with stopped fan appear original. If I move it to my basement, I think I am taking the monitor out.

Would have been interesting to see how a corrupted ROM dump would react in a emulator, ah the Billy Mitchell ROM mod.lool

haha the whole time, Im like why is Choplifter in a Stargate Cab and then Ron says the same thing. lol

I'd sometimes leave the screwdriver under the 2nd anode until I was ready to put things back together.

I like watching your videos i like working on old radios and electronics like that I've learned alot about reading and understanding schematics a bit better from your channel

Oh... It's actually upside down. I thought that was just a joke for the thumbnail, and it was just the image on the *monitor* that was upside down... Wow. 😆

LOL ! the " They Got Me" sounds the same !.....cheers.

I'm going to make the joke before someone else does it. "That's an aussie arcade machine!"

lol, finally hearing someone else say "leave the dirt" on old circuitry is awesome. I've tested that theory out sooooo many times. Clean the board vs leave the dirt. Leave the dirt wins 90% of the time.

Thanks for the video Joe & Ronnie!

There were 10 or 12 ROMs, I think 8k each. They had the different levels's programs in them. I remember comparing the eeprom to the factory many many years ago using a 9 pin serial eeprom reader Back when I was trying to figure out how the game worked and how it was hacked

@Joe's Classic Video Games - I held the 'Donkey Kong' high score (MAC) in my local drinking hole for two years solid, until someone trashed the machine in a burglary. The brewery replaced the best game ever made with Pacman.

Ones of my favorites all time classics. Great game.

Well.... I've only ever seen the first level 😂🤣

Super quick diagnosis and repair! Easy money!

I didn't notice at first that the DK was upside down because I was too busy looking at the Choplifter in the Stargate cab. . . then he said something about it and I snapped out of it. lol

started watchin AVGN 3 hours ago fell asleep and now im here. OK.

It's crazy to me that all these old games use through-hole components. You could probably print that whole board onto 1/4 of a postage stamp these days. Very cool to be able to test individual components.

I use to play Donkey Kong all the time on the Coleco Vision. The arcade version looks a lot harder.

I don't think I've ever seen an actual sized arcade machine upside down, let alone Donkey Kong. This is truly wacky!

That monitor looks AMAZING.

I don't own a Donkey Kong, but would LOVE to add it to my arcade some day. This game has GREAT sounds... have you ever heard of somebody upgrading the speakers in the cab? Perhaps with an amplified high performance subwoofer, mid, and tweeter setup?

"You want to leave all the dirt where it is, it helps it work". I can attest to that! Had an old b&w tv back in the '80s and '90s, one day, I decided to open it up and clean all the dust out (And boy was there a LOT of dust in it), put it back together, and, nothing. My take on it is that the TV had made new electrical connections with the dust to help it work better, and I basically gave it brain surgery!

#7:30 Have you ever considered using the Retro Chip Tester Pro for these tests? It shows directly which ROM it is (and therefore whether it is ok, it uses the MAME database). And it can test countless memory and logic ICs.

My guess why it would be upside down isn't the top of that heavier than the bottom. Probably easier putting it on a dolly that way

The magic dirt helps it work along with the magic smoke.

Gotta watch more Billy Mitchell videos. That was a good one Joe. You guys are awesome!

See...that's what happens when you leave DK upside down...the bits leak out of the "a" chip and Joe has to re-burn it.

U did it Better than the factory joe 🔧👍

"did he say what's wrong with it?" "something about the picture being inverted"

very good !

LoL it's not even 4 minutes in the video and two problems are identified. 😂

nice work

Makes me miss my old dk cab even more 😂 to bad you cant find them here anymore, id love to have one again

Danky Kang? LUL

Brilliant stuff 👍 Just wondering- why mustn’t you clean the dirt off and how does it help it?

I wonder if the sun got at that EPROM a bit too much and flipped a few bits? The back of the cabinet probably protected it for many years until it went missing. Still, surprised the erase windows weren't covered.

Obviously the lack of labels wot broke it. Good job unbroking it.

Great video. I am having the same problem with my Donkey Kong screen. Do you have a recommendation or sell the cap kit?

Hey Ron and Joe!!

Donkey Kong: Stranger Things Edition 😂

the story about burning an eprom multiple times was right for me. I burned a free play rom for a harlem globetrotter and it verified perfectly for me and ran on my test setup. In the game it would not boot. the game had .2 volts higher voltage then my bench test. test clips from regulator to game board would boot but harness would fail it. solution finally was to just reinforce the burning with at least burning in the data a second time and all was well

Didn’t the customer tell you they are into one of those new age therapies where they play while suspended upside down from a bar. Sure, anybody can play normally - but can you play while hanging upside down and the stress of all the blood rushing to your head? Tricky part is getting those special quarters that fall up when you put them in the coin slot.

"just rolled in"

billy mitchel spotted ripping a flash drive out of the mainboard and scurrying back into obscurity.

Joe: I'm not very good at Donkey Kong Also Joe: (plays an OK game by average arcade visitor standards) Joe: That was pathetic..........

That's a Honkey Dong..

This is the only picture on the internet of the bottom of a nintendo cabinet. Which is exactly what i needed! And how the heck do you level these machines at all?! What a dumb design.

He plays it while doing a hand stand

It's a good thing you guys got it turned back over before all the electrons fell out.

Maybe it's in cocktail mode. He thinks it's broken check the picture it may be upside down 😅😅😅

Australian Kong

What version of the Pocket Programmer is that? I need one

Lindo gabinete

Is that the rare upside-down Donkey Kong cabinet from Europe? Giggle

Sounds like theirs a faint looping jumping sound in the background… Be cool to see a video of your test bench setup. Curious how you are able to interchange between say a donkey board and an asteroids board. Do you have a bunch of different harnesses and power supplies? And a raster & vector monitor?

I would asked where the dk jr pcb was as the cabinet is for the dkjr game

I have a modern TL866 II Plus (USB) EPROM programmer and it cannot program 2732, 2764 etc. EPROMS. They have to be 27C32, 27C64 etc. CMOS lower voltage type. I’ve been looking for a better (and probably older) programmer that can handle the non CMOS EPROMS but all of these older ones like the one in this video are crazy expensive $100+. 🤨

Upside down and It's broke 😂

how are the colors still so vibrant on that monitor? do they never age?? Getting my first CRT in some 20+ years btw, going to be used for old school games and emulators. can't believe i feel excited for it lol, 20+ years ago you just couldn't wait to get rid of them.

Back in the day the eeprom was expensive as was the ROM. But it would have been a great idea if they would have had a backup set of code chips and a diagnostic program that would have been able to check the eeproms vs. the factory values and told you if it was bad and which ones were bad, and maybe even have a factory erase, re-burn eeprom from the factory backup ROMs. It would have made repair easier for messed up eeproms. Nowadays factory reset to default values is in most electronics that have user settable values.

Is it called a flyback because that's what happens to you if you mess with it before grounding it?

Great score compared to what I can do, and you didn't even cheat to get there. Apart from the 6 lives thing.

how much is that Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon ps1? is it on the ebay store?

I have a DK cocktail I need to repair and then sell.

Also i think standing the cabinet upside down wont put the magic smoke back in.

Guessing it fell off the turnip truck. 😳

If somebody were to make a mistake and clean off the vintage dirt, do y'all sell replacements?

My OCD would not allow me to leave the dirt.

It says..🙃..umm ..🧐...🙃...🧐...ahh i know..kinky dong 🙊

it came off the SS Poseidon.

Maybe he plays his game on an inversion table

Sucks that you have to take the CRT out to get to the control board. Wonder why they didn't mount it on the inside of the cabinet...

Yodelayheehoo

Would you care to explain why you left all the dust on it, I would clean it up since its completely out of the screen assembly.

What do you look for if when you plug it in all you get is a white screen?