Donkey Kong Forum
Related Games => Donkey Kong Junior => Topic started by: gaknar on March 06, 2018, 07:40:14 am
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About 8 years ago I purchase a DK Jr cabinet. The game board in this cabinet has always puzzled me, because the level progression matches that of the Japanese version of the game, but all other aspects of the game match the US version. The title screen says "Nintendo of America" and the serial number plate on the back says it's a US version, and yet the 4 stages of the game cycle through from the very first level of the game.
Adding to the mystery, when I first opened the cabinet up I found a 5C rom chip at the bottom of the cabinet (see pictures). Is it possible that this board was service at some point, had a bad 5C, and someone accidentally replaced it with a Japanese ROM for just this chip? Would that cause the behavior I'm seeing? Can anyone think of what else could be going on here?
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It looks like they are labeled as the -E (easier) so you probably have the -E kit.
Pretty cool. I'd love to have a set of those 'Original' -e roms to add to my collection of Nintendo kit ROMS
-Ken
Nintendo Service Department Bulletin # DJR-03 02-23-83
GAME: Donkey Kong Junior
SUBJECT: Play Time
It has come to our attention that play time on Donkey Kong
Junior is, in some cases, excessive, while in other cases
there is concern over the ability of players to learn the
game and thereby retain an interest in playing.
We are making available, through our Nintendo Distributors,
two EPROM change kits, designated DJR1-E and DJR1-P.
The E kit consists of four (4) chips and is an easier version
of the program. it presents the board sequence in a way which
familiarizes the players with the game faster. The board
order is vines, springboard, Mario's hideout and keys.
The P kit is a more difficult version consisting of two chips.
The order remains the same while more and faster
obstacles (snapjaws, nitpickers, etc.) are presented.
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E-Kit - roms
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Filename Label Type Loc/PCB CSum
----------- -------------- ------ ------- ---- --
2732.5Ae DJR1-C-5A e 2732 5A(CPU) 68E9
2764.5Be DJR1-C-5B e 2764 5B(CPU) B0CF
2764.5Ce DJR1-C-5C e 2764 5C(CPU) FC64
2764.5Ee DJR1-C-5E e 2764 5E(CPU) 7CC6
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P-Kit roms (Still looking for these, suffix is
more than likely P. :)
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Filename Label Type Loc/PCB CSum
----------- -------------- ------ ------- ---- --
empty --------- ---- 5A(CPU) ----
2764.5Bp DJR1-C-5B p 2764 5B(CPU) 1B58
2764.5Cp DJR1-C-5C p 2764 5C(CPU) F4FE
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Do you have an eprom burner, that you can use to dump that chip (or all of them, for that matter), and run each file through romident, to see what they match up with in the MAME set?
http://romident.coinopflorida.com/
If they match, then you will know what they are.
If they don't match anything in the MAME set, you may have one of the undumped sets, and folks would sure love to have that shared.
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I think it is very likely that what I have is the -e kit as Scoundrl said, since my 5A, 5B, 5C, and 5D chips all have the -e on them like the above service bulletin states. (thank you so much for this info Scoundrl!!! I finally have an answer to this question!!).
However, I am hopefully going to be procuring a DK board that has some sprite issues this weekend, and I was looking into getting an eprom reader / writer to do some work on it, and if I can figure all that out then I can check these DK Jr chips to be sure I know what I've got.
Can anyone recommend a eprom reader / writer that for sure works with the eproms from a DK and DK Jr. board? This one on amazon seems pretty versatile:
https://www.amazon.com/PRG-112-GQ-universal-programmer-Adapter/dp/B01212KD74/ref=sr_1_1?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1520431124&sr=1-1&keywords=gq-4x
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has anyone found the harder set of dk jr? there are 3 sets easy regular and hard