New Life Games Tech Forums

I too have too many hobbies.  Miatas and colt 1911's are my favs.  I hate to ask, but I have absolutly no experience with video arcades.  I am looking at a donkey kong cocktail game with a blank monitor.  Game sounds & seems to play blindly.  It's not terribly cheap, but reasonable if it can be fixed.  Wht should I look for and what might it be worth.  I've got some electronics & slot machine experience but this is a new monster to me.  Thanks!

It sounds like a monitor problem so you are probably in not too bad of shape.
The first step is to determine how dead the monitor is.
CRTs generally fail in three ways. Power, electronics or Tube.
Power is the most common failure and the easiest.... once you have power then we can start to move up town.

Power is generally the easiest to deal with.
Find out if there is power to the monitor - often the molex's interconnects get brittle from years of heat.
They could also have simply fallen out from someone lifting the monitor up for service - the coctail monitors are on swing hinges and sometimes they can get swung more than the circuits allow.

If you have power to the monitor run your finger over the CRT to see if you have static - again if you have static this means that things are working but perhaps you don't have a video signal.

If you don't have static on the monitor then we should be looking at the power transistor - find out what monitor you have in the machine and post back.

What I've found is that when you first power up, i t appears the screen image may come up but does not.  It ends up in a blurry line in the middle of the screen.  1983 Nintendo Donkey Kong cocktail table game if it makes a difference.  I'm thinking verticle correction.  Any advice?  Thanks.

This game is not in hand as I don't want to spend any $ on junk if it cannot be fixed reasonably.  I'm going on what I've seen when looking at it.  I'll try to find out what monitor it has. 

The person you want to PM on the specifics of this is probably Channel Maniac he is a god when it comes to arcade repair.

This sounds like the classic sympthoms of the power tranistor. On older TVs  and Monitors you had a large power transistor that was usually located on the side of the monitor chasis, held in by two screws. I might also suspect it makes a clicking sound when it is trying to start up then nothing.

The hard part of getting any of these things going is the actual game boards inside the machine. The rest is just dealing with the perils of old age.

Sounds like a deflection issue.

On an old monitor like that you'll need to put in a cap kit and resolder any cracked solder joints. The ones that typically crack are: yoke connector, pins on the flyback transformer, tube socket, and other connectors on the boards in the monitor.

Doing that will refresh the majority of monitors and is less than $20 including shipping - but not including your labor. ;)

Check "The Real Bob Roberts" website for cap kits.

RJ

                                           I just got through recapping my Donkey Kong Sanyo monitor and the picture is clear and colorful. One problem the vertical will not stay hold easily. I replaced the potentiometer but did not do the trick. I can center it by turning the potentiometer in micro movements but as soon as I turn off the game and turn it back on, it is not center anymore and I have to readjust the potentiometer again. I was told it was a combination of some zenarc diodes? I don't remember exactly the pronunciation the tech said and I should have wrote it down and something else I can't remember. This info was from a tech but he won't sell me the parts to fix it and said he makes a living by doing repairs so he won't sell parts? Anyone knows what parts that need replacing (location?) pictures? I got through recapping and adjusting and now this. I tried every dial on the board so I know it's not an adjustment. I plan to also do a 60 in one conversion and do the RGB conversion kit as well but need this screen to stay in the middle and not wander off. Any help is appreciated.