Donkey Kong cabinet, new project. COMPLETED!! (4-26-13)

[TGov]

Work is coming along slowly.  I have both sides ready to prime, but I am going to wait for the humidity to die down a bit before I spray it.  It might be a week or two on that one.   Yesterday I spent about two hours sandblasting the coin door.  It looks much better now and is ready to paint after I fix a little dent in the top of the door. 

My brother has a CNC machine so we played around with cutting out the control panel.  It is still new to him and I am not familiar with the machine, so we had some screw ups and I didn't have every measurement I needed.   You can see the sample pieces being cut out though

The PC has been shelled and I have Hyperspin working great, so the PC side of things is nearly done and ready to go.  My JPAC will hopefully be here any day now and I can start messing around with figuring the wiring out.

[brewerdude]

Looks great!  Whoever covered all that beautiful DK blue, must be kicking them-self right now.

[TGov]

I am not sure who did cover it or when it was but they did a really crappy job of it

Last night I fixed the dent in the coin door and got it sprayed with some Rustoleum Textured black paint.  It looks much better now.

[TGov]

My awesome brother delivered some presents for me tonight!  He did a great job building me a new bottom bezel and CP retainer and also routing out the CP and the speaker panel with the CNC.  He even built in the mounting blocks for them.  I think they look great and everything fits like a glove!  Time to get everything finished up on the body work front and get this thing ready to paint!!!

[TGov]

We got the first coat of primer on today and worked on fixing all of the little places I missed with some glaze putty.  Luckily I had my dad there to help me out on this part as he has been doing body work on cars for 40 years, so he knows what he is doing

All in all it looks so much better with the primer on it and has really made me excited to get the paint on there and get it finished up!

[DLinkOZ]

I had a similar restoration - kept it externally accurate (mostly) but I kept the VS control panel.  Internally, I justified not doing a proper restoration by telling myself that I was keeping things with the Nintendo theme.  That is, I put an old NES inside and wired up the pair of controllers to the VS control panel.  I still need to modify the DK cpo to match the VS layout, but that's kind of a C list task right now.

http://album.oesm.org/arcade/Donkey%20Kong/2012-10-14/index.html#149675_505866832771992_1010274754_n.jpg

[TGov]

Found some more rough spots so we re-glazed and sanded it down and re-primered the cab.  It is ready for paint now   Hopefully this week.  My brother is also building me a new base for the cab as this one is about shot and not square on the bottom.   

[DaOld Man]

Looking good!!

[TGov]

Well with the weather warming up I have finally gotten around to painting this beast.  First coat of oil based enamel is on.  I had a run on the far side so I am going to have to wait for it to dry a few days and sand it out and respray.  I have been busy the last couple of months bringing a Space Duel back from the dead.   So this one got put on the back burner.   I really hope to get this done by the time the month is out.

[TGov]

Slowly making more progress.   My machines on location and the Alladin's Choice restore I am doing for a friend are taking up all of my time.  The cab is now fully painted, but I don't have a picture of it yet.  I finished up the control panel tonight and wired it all up.  I need to get a hold of some molex connectors though for the CP.  My brother built me a new base for the cab since mine was shot.  I think he did a great job! 

[TGov]

Well, we are almost there! The cab is complete, the monitor is working and looks great (love the EZ20's).  Got the computer installed, jamma harness is installed, jpac installed........and then the controls wouldn't register inside windows........great.

So, I threw in a NeoGeo 1 slot PCB I had lying around to test my controls and they all worked just fine.  Hours and hours later of fighting with the JPAC trying to get it to work i broke down, removed the CP wiring and wired it up using a 36 button USB controller board I had lying around.  Hooked it up, boom, controls are now working...YAY! 

Next is the sound.  I had purchased a great little audio amp PCB kit from electronickits.com and put it together.

http://electronickits.com/kit/complete/ampl/k143.htm

I had been searching around for a power supply for it for a while now.  It needs 8-18 volts at 1-2 amps.  While working in the cab I noticed my switching power supply happened to have a 12v 2amp line on it.  Perfect!  Hooked it up, works great!!  Nice clear sound coming out of the DK speaker.  Shut the computer down as I had to go to dinner.   Came back a few hours later.......the computer won't boot up now.  Ugghh.

Worked on it for over two hours....it won't even boot the bios.  Sooooo.....either it is a vid card issue or a motherboard.  I am leaning towards mother board at this point as all it will do is power the fans on, nothing after that.

Luckily I have a buddy who is giving me a nice Core 2 Duo machine that will work great.  I hope to have it all up and running by this evening. 

As for the cab itself, I think it turned out really good considering what it looked like when I started.  The colors in the pictures are all off due to the light and the cell phone camera.  I will take some better pictures once I get it all up and running.  I did use the cheap side art, and while it looks good, I will eventually put some better screen printed artwork on it.  The oil based satin paint looks great and has a finish just like the original laminate.

Sorry, that was a rambling post!!!

[Drnick]

Looks pretty damned authentic to me 

[Maximus]

Looks great, congrats on your lovely minty fresh new DK!!

[TGov]

Thanks gents!

[alteredgrafix]

Looks great!!!! Have fun seeing how high you can get!

[sabreerbasAlpha]

Without a doubt. The DK Blue cab is the king of all Cabs. Looking sweet my friend and a really nice job. So much hard work by the looks of it. You must be really proud of her...

[TGov]

Thanks guys 

Ya, it was a ton of work but it was worth it.  The only thing I don't like about it right now is the Omni 2 joystick.  I really don't care for the feel and it keeps sticking from time to time.  The switching from 4 to 8 way is nice but is annoying at the same time.  So I ordered a JLF with an octagonal restrictor and feel how that goes.

Love the Sanyo, such a great monitor.

[TGov]

A few more pictures using a better camera

[Maximus]

Looks great now I'm jealous I'm still waiting for my flyback for my Sanyo. My DK is just a glorified paper weight at the moment lol

[Gamester]

Looks awesome!  Makes me want to do a restore.  Maybe after I finish and recover from the pin build I'll consider it.  Still have a slot or two available on the wall in my game room that may need filling. 

So what's next on the list?  Time to get back to your hybrid pin-cade thingamajigger?   

[Mr Wilson]

awesome!  i wish i could find a DK in the classifieds here in the UK,i think my next project will be a Restoration of some kind   

[sabreerbasAlpha]

awesome!  i wish i could find a DK in the classifieds here in the UK,i think my next project will be a Restoration of some kind

Build one from scratch. You can do it 

[TGov]

Thanks guys.  Up next is selling my Space Duel that is next to the DK there and buying a pin to replace it.  While I would love to do the virtual pin thing, i just don't have the time or energy to devote to building it and setting it all up   I am hoping to find a Jackbot

[mgb]

The DK looks awesome