Donkey Kong - Missing Character Sprites

[LTC]

Hey all, hoping to get some help with my DK. I turned it on for the first time in a couple of months, and my character sprites are missing. No Jump-man, no monkey, no barrels. Game still "plays" as I can hear Jump-man run, jump, climb and get hit by barrels. No idea where to start troubleshooting.

[PL1]

Hey all, hoping to get some help with my DK. I turned it on for the first time in a couple of months, and my character sprites are missing. No Jump-man, no monkey, no barrels. Game still "plays" as I can hear Jump-man run, jump, climb and get hit by barrels. No idea where to start troubleshooting.

Seems like an important early step is to figure out which type of DK board set you have -- a Radar Scope conversion TKG-2, a 4 board TKG-3 (closely correlated with the older MAME "US set 2" ROMs), or a 2 board TKG-4 (closely correlated with the newer MAME "US set 1" ROMs) -- since the ROM locations are different for the different boards.

You might try this site for info.
- It lists the type of data on each ROM.
- There are some screencaps of what happens when certain ROMs go bad.
https://www.brasington.org/arcade/tech/dk/

Looks like the DK Forum site is for sale, but this archive.org backup has info about the different DK board types and ROMs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200910214143/http://donkeykongforum.com/index.php?topic=439.0

Another possible source of information is 10yard and his DKAFE project. He has done lots of DK hacks including sprite swaps so he can probably point you toward which specific ROM(s) should have the missing sprites.
https://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,164960.0.html
https://github.com/10yard/dkafe#readme


Scott