DEAD Donkey Kong Cartridges

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:47 pm

This sucks. One of my favourite VIC-20 cartridges, "Donkey Kong" by Atari seemed to have died a few months ago. No matter what VIC-20 I plug it into (I have tried four) all I get is a black screen when I power on.

I cleaned the contacts, opened it up and re-touched all the solder points. No luck.....

So I figure....okay, it's the first cartridge I've ever owned to die, but that's not unheard of.

So I buy a BRAND NEW, unopened Donkey Kong cartridge off of Ebay.

I get it, plug it in and the SAME THING happens on all my VICs. Black screen.

This is the ONLY cartridge in my collection that does this. All the other AtariSoft ones work just fine.

What are the odds?

Is there any way to pull the ROM off the board and test it some other way? I have an obscure board called a RAM/ROM Expander which has sockets to accept chips (I have no idea how it works though).

Anyone else have any ideas about how to test or ressurect these cartridges?

I'm willing to buy a THIRD....but that's it! Anyone have a working spare to trade? (I'm going to post my tradelist in the trades section now).

Leeeeee · Post by **Leeeeee** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:23 am

Anyone else have any ideas about how to test or ressurect these cartridges?

You can test them by PEEKing the addresses from BASIC, though if the cart doesn't work I'd guess BASIC won't see it either, you'd just confirm it is broken.

The cart can be resurrected by replacing the ROM with an EPROM with the correct image in it. This is probably not a straight swap as some pins may differ, but it is not impossible.

Lee.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 5:26 am

On a related note, I once bought a sealed C64 Donkey Kong cart that ended up being dead out of the box.

I've got a spare DK here, but it's complete, so I'd probably only let it go in that condition as opposed to just selling the cart.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:37 am

Donkey Kong has a bit odd memory layout, BLK1 + BLK5 as opposed to most other 16K games (even the other Atarisoft titles) which are BLK3 + BLK5. I don't know the reason for this, and I assume it is only a matter of using a different pin on the cartridge port. Maybe the pin that goes to BLK1 is more vulnerable for wear and tear than the other?

On the other hand, it would mean that all 8K RAM expansions also were in danger.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:04 pm

I would suspect the problem is with the expansion port, but who knows?

Leeeeee · Post by **Leeeeee** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 2:55 am

We all will if someone sends me a dead one to autopsy.

I'll even fix it if it's possible.

Lee.