Restoring a Donkey Kong Arcade Cocktail Table

This past summer I came across a listing for a Donkey Kong Arcade cocktail table that I couldn’t resist. The seller was moving and getting rid of some Arcade machines he had in his garage. He said that it “should work”, but was disassembled. He at least knew that the board was tested and was functional, but hadn’t tested the monitor. I snapped a few photos of it after picking it up with my pal Beau, who has helped me out a ton with getting this machine back in action (thanks dude!). It was purchased for $170.

  • All the guts are there. The monitor was on the floor when we picked it up.
  • One side of controls the controls are intact. The other side is missing the joystick and a button.
  • It has the original coin slot, still working!

After hauling it back to Seattle, we started poking around to see what needed to be done to get it up and running. The seller included a new power supply, so I searched around online for the instructions for it and luckily found them fairly easily. We soldered the power lines up and were able to turn the machine on and see the monitor power up!

Mmm… burn in. At least you know for sure that it is Donkey Kong!

Next we needed to figure out how to connect the power supply up to the board. We discovered that at some point in the past the main cable harness was cut in order to hook up to a different power supply:

This harness has seen MUCH better days.

So I searched around the web again and found some of the connectors and plugs I’d need to add the plugs back to the cut wires in order to still use the original harness with the machine.

My attempt at adding plugs to the end of the existing cable. I think in the end I needed to just push these in further, but the cables were too thick to fit into the plug any further.

In the end, my repair job only sort-of worked. The plugs were too loose and would fall off of the power supply too easily. We used electrical tape to keep them down. It was still very exciting though, when we hooked up the cables we saw Donkey Kong boot up to the monitor!

  • Hooking up the repaired cables.
  • It’s alive!

The controls and coin slot were working as well!

Beau got the official “First person to get Mario killed” honors 😉

Unfortunately the electrical tape wasn’t holding the cables down too well. So another internet search lead me to Mike’s Arcade which has loads of parts for Arcade Machines. $40 later and I had a new cable harness, and it connected up perfectly. We then found the place to adjust the monitor settings for focus and other settings like horizontal and vertical positioning. It started looking really good:

  • Hooking up the new cable harness.
  • Tweaking the monitor settings.
Everything is working! Controls, sound, and display.

There is a problem with one of the potentiometers that controls the horizontal scrolling. It doesn’t seem to ever stop scrolling, no matter how much you adjust it. I think we will need to replace this Pot with a new one to get it stable again.

Here’s my daughter playing Donkey Kong for the first time ever, with the top on the cabinet:

There’s still a lot more to do with it, but for now it is functioning and is a nice addition to the Automattic Seattle coworking space. Here’s some of the things on my ToDo:

  • Fix the horizontal scrolling issue I mentioned above.
  • Replace the glass on the top of the cabinet, it is really scratched up.
  • Get new locks installed, I don’t have the key for the existing ones 🙂
  • Replace the decals that are on the top of the table. Mine are sun faded.
  • Repair some of the stripped screws on the main hinges at the top of the table.