Donkey Kong Restoration Update!

RetroRalph·video·10m 50s·analyzed·Aug 4, 2021

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.021

TL;DR

Donkey Kong arcade restoration reaches testing phase with custom harness and monitor swap.

Summary

RetroRalph documents his Donkey Kong arcade cabinet restoration project, focusing on custom wire harness construction and monitor setup. He successfully powers up the cabinet and tests controls, credits a friend (Danny) for providing a replacement Sanyo EZ-20 monitor, and discusses the impact of a fire at Mike's Arcade on parts availability. The project is nearing completion with plans to clean up the cabinet and apply artwork while maintaining its patina.

Key Claims

Mike's Arcade experienced a fire that destroyed significant inventory of Nintendo cabinet parts and control panels
high confidence · Directly stated by Jon as reason for building custom wire harness; mentioned as ongoing impact to parts availability
The custom wire harness worked on the first try after referencing the PCB manual
high confidence · Jon explicitly states: 'I actually surprisingly got the wiring harness right the first time. I referenced the PCB manual'
Sanyo EZ-20 monitors can be oriented either horizontally or vertically depending on the game
high confidence · Jon directly explains this capability while showing the monitor
Nintendo arcade boards do not have built-in free play functionality and require credits to be inserted
high confidence · Jon states: 'Nintendo boards don't allow you to put them in free play. You actually have to insert credits'
Inverter boards on Sanyo monitors are not necessary for all applications, particularly when using non-Nintendo games
medium confidence · Jon explains inverter boards are optional: 'you don't necessarily need to use these for all applications'

Notable Quotes

“I actually surprisingly got the wiring harness right the first time. I referenced the PCB manual so I could make sure everything was wired correctly.”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 5:58 — Key technical success moment; demonstrates importance of accurate documentation in arcade restoration
“They want these machines to run for a long time, right. They want to keep them running for the future. So the thing is, when a lot of these standard power supplies would fail, they'd have voltage spikes and all sorts of nasty stuff which would often sort of reduce the lifetime of the PCB.”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 9:41 — Explains maintenance philosophy; switching power supplies as longevity investment
“It's unfortunate that Mike's Arcade had a fire because they are such a big contributor to Donkey Kong, well, Nintendo cabinet restorations as a whole.”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 8:16 — Community support message; highlights Mike's Arcade's importance to arcade restoration ecosystem
“When you have burn-in, it's permanent. But I would like to get this one up and running.”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 1:56 — Addresses monitor burn-in realities and repair strategy for CRT displays

Entities

RetroRalphpersonJonpersonMike's ArcadecompanyDannypersonMark KimpersonHigh Score SavescompanyTNT Amusementscompany Donkey KonggameSanyo EZ-20product

Signals

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community_signal: Arcade restoration community providing direct support through parts donation (Sanyo monitor from Danny, PCB sourcing from unknown donor)
high · Jon thanks Danny for monitor and expresses gratitude to unnamed party for PCB boards; frames as 'things falling into place'
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supply_chain_signal: Mike's Arcade fire has reduced parts availability for Nintendo arcade cabinet restoration, forcing alternative sourcing and custom solutions
high · Jon explicitly discusses fire impact on Mike's Arcade inventory and necessity to build custom wire harness from manual diagrams
?
technology_signal: Custom wire harness construction succeeded on first test after careful manual documentation review
high · Jon states 'I actually surprisingly got the wiring harness right the first time. I referenced the PCB manual'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.032

0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. So in today's episode, I'm going to give you an update on the Donkey Kong. So we're getting pretty close. So I'm going to show you, I was working on the wire harness this weekend. Actually, here's a clip of that really quick.

0:14

What you working on? Well, um, there's a company named Mike's Arcade. They do a lot of this Nintendo stuff. So if you have a Nintendo cabinet and you want to, you know, get a new control panel, they have control panels all put together. but they had a fire, unfortunately, and so a lot of their inventory is gone. So I'm having to take the wire diagram, you know, from the manual and sort of make my own wire harness. So it's pretty complicated. Yeah, so there's the end of the wire harness. It's not actually that complicated. It's just time-consuming and tedious. So yeah, so that's what I'm doing. And once this is done, I'm going to go into the garage and test it. And hopefully at that point, it all works. If it works on the first try, that'd be awesome. So we'll see. that's it we'll keep our fingers crossed we got this that turned out okay so let's go check it out and i'll show you what's going on over there here's the donkey kong it's not powered up right now but i got the control panel all wired up so it all looks it looks good right now it's all wired up now i had to create my own harness which is what you saw in that video with kim but what we're gonna do is oh before i before i actually get started i wanted to mention something so i i had a Sanyo EZ-20, which is the Nintendo monitor, in there. And it was working, but it had some issues, and I was going to need to recap it. Well, come to find out, a buddy of mine, Danny, actually had an extra one. So here is a Sanyo EZ-20. This is what they look like. And they can be flipped either horizontal or vertical based on what games were in those Nintendo cabinets. But yeah, so I'm having some issues with this one. The top of the screen is sort of starting to roll down. I mean, this screen does have burn-in, so that's obviously something that cannot be fixed. When you have burn-in, it's permanent. But I would like to get this one up and running, so what I did is I got one from Danny. I bought it. And this one, I'm going to actually recap so I have the spare. But this one over here that I put in here seems to be running okay. So I want to show you guys what I did. Here's the actual Donkey Kong board for those of you who've never seen it. JAMMA boards are really simple, right? It's a simple and easy edge connector. This one is a little bit more complicated as you can see. There's multiple connections to it, and there's some janky stuff going on because I had to build my own wire harness, as you saw earlier. But I learned a couple things that were interesting. So there's this board, there's an inverter board that's on these Sanyo EZ monitors. I gonna just show it to you really quick here So here an inverter board Now the interesting thing is I wasn sure I new to these Nintendo cabinets for the most part I done that one restoration on the Versus Goonies I not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but there these inverter boards, and these inverter boards, apparently you don't necessarily need to use these for all applications. Like, if you're going to use a non-Nintendo game on a Sanyo monitor, you can use one of these, but I don't need one. So what you've got here is the video connection runs straight to the monitor so you can see it kind of runs around there and it goes into the monitor right over there and on the um versus uni system i had the inverter board mounted here so it's it's not necessary in this in this setup now what was interesting to me is to to change shorter your red blue green the gain on your red blue green you had to do that on this board but actually when you're not using that board you can see underneath the neck board there's your actual adjustments or potentiometer adjustments for the color. Anyhow, so this is the Donkey Kong board. It's all wired up, and again, I got rid of the standard power supply that came with the Nintendo cabinet. I'm using a switcher. This is by all means not finished because I have to remove the Versus cage and get the Donkey Kong board mounted, but I also, because I don't have the ability to put this board in free play, Nintendo boards don't allow you to put them in free play. You actually have to insert credits in order to use them So there's a company called high score saves which creates a free play kit for these But because I don't have that right now and because the coins aren't are the sorry The coin acceptors aren't wired yet. I just put on this little switch so I can insert coins So this is good. This is just for testing purposes I'm gonna you know, probably get the high score saves kit at the end of the day So anyways, let's fire it up. See what we get. I'm gonna turn it on right here You should hear a little sound effect from the game So hopefully you heard that. We're gonna put the volume up a little bit. Now the volume adjustment on these Nintendo cabinets is interesting, it's on the back. So kind of a weird place for it, but that's the volume adjustment right here. So we're just gonna put that up slightly, and see, we'll try to press this coin button one more time.

7:46

Boom! All right, guys, it's final thoughts time. So what do I think about this Donkey Kong arcade cabinet project so far? So so far it it working out really well I got to thank the Rexer show for giving me the actual PCBs To run the game so we gonna figure out you know cost on all that stuff But anyways I really do appreciate him coming through on that because these boards are a lot harder to come by nowadays You know you can find them but this was a known working one. So it's great. So I got that. It's unfortunate that Mike's Arcade had a fire because they are so there's such a big contributor to Donkey Kong. Well, Nintendo cabinet restorations as a whole so if you have parts that you need for different arcade projects try to go to mike's arcade right now uh and buy from them they had that fire they're replenishing stock but anything you can do to support them would be really helpful and uh and i hope that they're back and running full steam ahead pretty soon here they do have some inventory but just not as much as they did before so i had to build that wire harness myself you know luckily it worked on the first try like that never happens so that's really cool so i'm just i'm overall really excited And then someone happened to have a Sanyo Easy Monitor for me. So, I mean, like, all these things are just falling into place. That doesn't often happen, so I'm super grateful for that. And I'm so excited because this Donkey Kong will absolutely be going in my house once I'm done cleaning it up, putting the artwork on, and stuff like that. This cabinet's going to have the patina look. So, I'm not going and doing a full restore on the sides. It actually is in pretty good shape. It has some scuffs and stuff, but hey, it's an arcade game. It's going to have some scuffs. All right, guys, if you enjoyed this content... Oh, one more thing. so I did replace the power supply with a switching power supply and I get this question a lot this was kind of a tip that I got from from TNT Amusements they tend to put switching power supplies in almost all of their cabinets and there's a reason for that they want these these machines to to run for a long time right they want to keep them running for the future so the thing is when a lot of these standard power supplies would fail they'd have voltage spikes and all sorts of nasty stuff which would often sort of reduce the lifetime of the PCB or the PCB would need to be repaired. So to alleviate the idea that there could be any potential voltage risk to the PCB, it's great to put a switching power supply in. Now I understand it's not original equipment, not everyone's going to agree with that, but I have refurbished some of my power supplies, but in this case I'm putting a switcher in there because I want this one to last for a long time. All right guys, that's it. If you enjoyed this video, give me a thumbs up, put your comments below, I want to hear from you, and I really appreciate you guys supporting the channel. that's it take care and we will see you on the next one