I built a DK bartop with a CRT and original pcb!

[TriggerFinger]

Hey you all, I lurked here for a while researching how to build this thing.  Thought I'd slap up some pics and see what you guys think.

Short backstory, I'm a child of the 80's and I went to a day care that had a dk arcade machine.  Played it all the time, loved it.  Now I've got my own kids and a tech career so I thought "hey, I bet I can build a dk and put it on top of the basement mini fridge".

So,it was important to me that I could get it running with the original board, legit Nintendo joystick/buttons, and a crt.  And damn! Does it look and sound sweet.  Also it cost me more than I'd like to admit, but let's not get into that!

My woodworking skills are balls, so I bought a sweet bartop kit from mameroom.com.  It's the only one I could find that would support a crt tube.  Anyway, I found a sony pvm-14m2mdu on ebay that had 2 sets of RGB inputs so I decided to use the second input for mame with crtemu driver.  Work just happened to have some old radeon hd 7x cards laying around, and I hastily built a MaLa implementation with most of the vertical games and the horizontal one's that would display without being interlaced.  Calamity REALLY did a good job with crtemu, but the real dk arcade board video is just razor sharp.

Most of the work was done late at night after work so there were definitely some screw-ups, I'd would like to redo the control panel plexi some day.  Needs some side art too... Overall though the kids and I really like this thing, probably my favorite tech build ever.  On to the pics:

[DeLuSioNal29]

Nice!  Have you considered installing a DK Remix and high score save kit?

https://www.highscoresaves.com/donkey-kong-remix-muiltigame-high-score-save-kit-with-deranged-trainer-and-pace-dk.html



DeL

[wp34]

I'm impressed you were able to get all those guts into that little bar top.   

[rhoelsch]

That DK with PCB and CRT make you BMOC of the BYOAC. Sorry. Home alone with the kids tonight.

[TriggerFinger]

Thanks I actually already am running a DK Remix daughterboard on the arcade board.  I'm really impressed that people are coding new levels for DK. Assembler code is extremely difficult to create anything with, it's just incredible that dk2 and Remix even exist!  The trainer mode is a huge help for figuring out how to beat some of the later boards too.

One thing I am concerned about is drink spillage on the control panel dripping down onto the board.  Has anyone tried to seal up the underside of a panel? I'm thinking plastic and velcro maybe?

[yotsuya]

Keep drinks away. Problem solved.

[TriggerFinger]

Earth shattering

[Automark]

Ok, but did you really cut an original cp panel for this? 

[Wyo]

Really cool that you used a dK board!

Yeah, my only question is since you went to the trouble of printing a marquee and bezel, why not a cpo as well?

Definitely will look more finished when you get to that.

Good work!   

[TriggerFinger]

Nah I cut a repro panel, I wouldn't butcher a legit original.  But yeah I should have just had one made at gameongraffix.  I may still after I get tired of looking at it the way it is