Response from Jonathan: Robert,

From your description, it sounds like your Donkey Kong has a board issue. Unfortunately issues like this can be hard to track down. You might start off your repair by checking out our post on Inspecting An Arcade Board as it has some general tips that might help you get your board back up and running. From our experience, problems like this are usually caused by an issue with the Z80 code chips. See this page on Donkey Kong Troubleshooting to help you find where these chips reside on your board. You can get replacements for these chips from HobbyRoms or other ROM burning sources. Keep in mind that this is just a guess on our part and that there still could be other problems with your board.

Now, we do have some people we recommend for board repair if you do not feel comfortable doing this type of work yourself. Eldorado Games at eldoradogames.com has a very good reputation and they usually get your board back to you in a reasonable amount of time. You might also try our friend Raymond at arcadecomponents.com. Raymond is very knowledgeable but he can get pretty busy so make sure you check with him before sending your board to him. There is also a list of additional board repair guys under the Board (PCB) Repair & Component Sales heading on our resources page that might be able to help you out as well.

Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.