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SithOfSpades:
Quick update. Twice this weekend I made it past 12-2 (the halfway board) with half my men or more still on 1 million pace. My best game with bottom hammers is a little over 700 K well above pace. I feel like I have made a lot of progress on the barrels and am back into a place where all I need is to play well and have solid pies and rivets.

I expect to have some close calls, but am hopeful some big results are on the horizon.

Also, https://www.twitch.tv/videos/421210629 12,500 level 5+ rivet!! When I played it, I felt like it went just about perfect. It missed the WR by 200 points, so I was curious why. Here is how I break it down: We both get 11 smashes. We both get 800 for the umbrella and hat. I didn't get the purse, he got 800 for it. I outscored him 7100 to 6900 on non-smash points. He outscored me 5800 to 5400 on smashes. I believe expected points per smash is 525. I ran slightly unlucky at 491. He ran almost right at average at 527. If I get an average points per smash of 525 I score 12,875. It would have been cool to have a legit WR, but luck is a big part of this game.

NWnike:
Congrats on that rivet board. I know I  have seen a couple really good games unravel for you. Patience is a vengeful mistress. Keep grinding buddy!

SithOfSpades:
I recently had a bittersweet PB of 991,900.

The sweet first. I had started having some creeping doubts that maybe I didn't really yet have the skill to achieve the 1 million. Although I fell just short, this has erased any doubt from my mind that as things currently stand I have the knowledge to get a 1 million point game and the ability to execute at a high enough level for a long enough time to get that score. It is not every day I get a new PB, so that is a nice feeling. Now I know I just have to do it.

Now the bitter. I was so close. I think I was a pretty big favorite (probably higher than 95%) to get the 1 million if I had just run the last barrel board with no bottom hammer and run the game out. My thinking at the time was that I was playing the barrels at a very high level and the rivets are among the highest variance, deadliest boards, so I felt like going for the million on the barrel board made sense. I probably survive if I aggressively chase the fireball with the hammer and smash him. I swing back to get a barrel on the middle ladder and from that point on, the fireball goes perfectly against me to kill me. It was rough to be so close and fall short. I think the primary reason I didn't get the million were being tired and nerves. I had 2 bad deaths. On a weeknight, I am just worn out from the day. I like to get to bed by 10 PM local time, and that game was just getting under way. at that time. Adrenaline was probably carrying me at the end, but I don't feel like I was at my best for the last half hour or so.

Overall, I see this as a positive. I can do it.

I am still in a bit of a honeymoon period with the new PB. I have a lot of other stuff going on that is going to make it hard for me to do much more than the periodic attempts here and there. I need to find something to do when I can't really play full games. Maybe some mix of max out start attempts (although if I get  big one, I might feel bad having to abort a game) and running the board starts and starting to practice for higher scores by adding some grouping on the 5+ barrels. Also, getting the purse efficiently on the higher level springs.

SithOfSpades:
Still no 1 Million. Have been going through a rough patch of playing. Having trouble staying focused and putting a run together. Right now, I am not feeling very confident, but I still feel like I can do it. I do feel like when I am playing well, I am getting unlucky boards.

Hardware stuff:

I got the Mr. Video and that has been great.

My DDK board is having an issue where the background music will cut out and become a high pitched screech. You can still hear jumping, walking, ladder climbing, and DKs stomping. It can happen after a few minutes or take an hour to go bad during a session. It will fix itself if I switch games. Seems to happen quicker after a switch the longer the cabinet is on. The fact that it works and can produce all the sounds makes me think it is not an issue with a chip. I suspect a capacitor failing. I am far from an expert though. I am going to try testing the voltage across some capacitors when it is working versus failing at some point.
I am going to try my hand at fixing that for a bit. I suspect one might be shorting out as it heats up.

I got around to testing the TKG-3 I got a while back. It is not fully working. I don't know what the sound is like, because I don't have the extra power cable it requires to go to the sound board. The video works with some glitches and the control works. I am going to try and remove and clean the video eproms and see if that helps. You can play the game, but the sprites have some issues. The backgrounds all look correct.

I am getting a TKG-4 from Mike's Arcade. Should have it soon. I guess I will be able to submit real deal arcade scores soon. Once I get that, I will start working to repair the DDK. I would like to have some way to play before I risk making the DDK worse. Work on the TKG-3 will be slow, because I can't use the edge connector, so no direct feed and connecting it is a pain compared to the 2-board sets. I want to get the DDK repaired so I can put in and play a DDK remix kit. I may try and get a switcher to go back and forth between those 2 boards without taking them out.

SithOfSpades:
TLDR: Still no 1 million, but I am feeling optimistic and having some longer stretches of solid play. My hardware situation is looking good, so I expect more play time and less dealing with hardware.

Hardware update:

I believe I have fixed the issue I was seeing with the sound on my DDK board. I found that the ground wire from the control panel had fallen out of the black connector that goes into the board on the control panel side. I found this when replacing some switches I thought were bad because I was having some weird jumping/movement issues. I now suspect that the switches were fine too, so I kept them, but I found the wire after replacing the switches. I think all my issues may have been due to ground loops due to this broken connection. I suspect this got pulled out when I converted to using all edge connectors which lines up pretty well with when I first started having the issue. I have not had any sound issues since finding this, and I have had some medium deep runs. Feeling good about this. I am planning to get the DDK remix kit for this board soon.

I now have a working TKG-4 board (rev 14 for those that care). I got this from MikesArcade. At first, there were some sprite issues, and I was very frustrated. This turned out to be caused by one of my connectors to the power supply (specifically the CLK power connection) not making good connection. I reseated that connection and changed how the cable was supported in the cabinet in order to not have the weight of the cable put any pressure on the connection, and that cleared up the sprite issues. This weird connection caused no problems with my DDK board as I could swap back and forth and have the DDK look fine while the TKG-4 would have issues. This may have also been a contributor to my previous DDK sound issues though.

I finally got around to testing the TKG-3 (rev 7). I got this for $75 as "untested." I bought this as a project to get into some light board repair stuff. I fully expected this to be a complete mess way beyond my skill set, but I have been pleasantly surprised. Here is a brief video of my first test: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/463133950. It plays fine and the sounds are all correct. There appears to only be a sprite issue. I did some research and came across the great resource: http://www.brasington.org/arcade/tech/dk/. This lead me to focus on the 2716 EPROM at 4N on the CLK board. I went ahead and purchased the equipment to read, write, and erase those. I pulled the 4N out read it and replaced the appropriate file in dkong and I get output that looks almost identical to that in MAME (I saved this version for future reference), so I think this is actually going to be a pretty straight forward fix. I have hit one snag. I didn't read the fine print and the chip reader/writer I got won't actually write this EPROM. It requires 25 V in order to write, and my writer will only provide 18 V. I have purchased a 2816 EEPROM which I can write with my device and should be a drop in replacement for reading. So that is an option. However, I believe I can write the 2716 in the device I have if I supply the 25 V externally to the correct pins. I don't have a variable DC power supply, but the DK power supply provides 24 V at one of the pins. I measured mine, and it actually is giving about 24.6 V under load. This should be within the write tolerance listed on the 2716 datasheet. I am considering rigging this up to write that EPROM. Even if I ruin the chip and the writer, I can get a programmed 2716 from MikesArcade for $15. Really, this is more of a teach a man to fish type rather than cost thing. I want to be comfortable maintaining my cabinet, and the more stuff I can do for myself, the better.

If anyone is interested in me streaming any of this fiddling around with hardware, let me know. If I attempt writing the 2716, there is a decent chance I burn my house down!

Playing update:

I should have more time to play, which I think will translate into bigger scores. I have had more frequent long lives, but not yet put a couple of good lives into 1 game since the 991,900. I am pretty consistently holding pace across levels, so I think I have the technique in place. I just need to have a good session where I can focus a whole game and get this done. I do think pressing too hard on the start has hurt my overall play. I am not getting as much level 5+ practice because I am resetting too much. I will probably tone this down. I plan to keep pressing level 1 hard, but revert back to the star pattern for level 2 rivets.

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