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

[LTC]

Thank you, great info. I believe it is the TKG-4 board set. I will verify this weekend. I looked over at brasington.org site and none of the sample images there match what I have going on. I will get pictures posted over the weekend.

[10yard]

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

Hey Scott,

The Donkey Kong Forum moved to a new site a couple years back,   folks there will definitely be able to help LTC better than I can with hardware issues.
https://donkeykongforum.net/

These eeproms on the PCB are responsible for graphics.  The ID of the chip and the related file in MAME below.

Fixed/background graphics

3N → v_5h_b.bin
3P → v_3pt.bin

Sprites / moving objects

7C → l_4m_b.bin
7D → l_4n_b.bin
7E → l_4r_b.bin
7F → l_4s_b.bin

I've never seen an actual board myself,  so head over to Donkey Kong Forums LTC,  and you'll get the help you need.
They also have a discord at https://discord.gg/2tjHUa6wM

Good luck