NeoGeoCD or CDZ

[smokey]

I want to buy one of these two systems. And I wanted you guys 'opinions on what to get. CDZ seems faster but I heard it can lock up. Is it really that often? Can you help it by placing extra coolings or something? Advice is needed! Thanks in advance

 

[Xian Xi]

CDZ, there's nothing a small fan can't fix in that thing. From the one I saw it looks like just a pure ventilation problem.

 

[WoodyXP]

CDZ is the way to go. I've found that if you give it enough room to breathe it won't lock up/overheat.

 

[kaicer]

If you dont mind loading time and is in good price you can take the normal neo geo cd top loader, but if you want speed the take the CDZ and give good ventilation or make a fan mod.

 

[Opethian]

I f you plan on playing any of the later fighting games you must get a CDZ.

 

[EngineersCake]

Is there a mod to speed up the CD? Can the 1X CD ROM be ugraded or something?
I'm a Neo-Noob.

 

[Mr.Kevums]

Is there a mod to speed up the CD? Can the 1X CD ROM be ugraded or something?
I'm a Neo-Noob.

If i'm not mistaken, the drive in the CDZ is also a 1X. The CDZ's advantage on load times is due to a larger memory cache.

 

[kuk]

normaly it's an 2x (SNK said that)

So if you want to play often CDZ is the best
i you want just some game and play some time you could buy the CD Top

 

[joe8]

If i'm not mistaken, the drive in the CDZ is also a 1X. The CDZ's advantage on load times is due to a larger memory cache.

The actual speed of the drive is somewhere in between a 1x and a 2x CD-ROM.
Neither of the two Neo CD systems are any good for loading times (except on older games, and maybe shooters). And they don't have the newer Neo Geo games made after 1999. Just get an AES or an MVS.

 

[Robert]

Loading Times are awful with some games so the faster you load, the better=> cdz all the way

 

[EngineersCake]

I'm somewhat technically inclined. Can I mod the memory (beyond 58Mbit), the processor (Motorola 68000 @ 12 Mhz to the faster 68000 or the 68010) or the CD drive (from a 1X to a 2X or 4X)?

I'm stuck on the top loader CD because it has fewer issues (cooling), looks better than the CDZ and Metal Slug/Pulstar aren't gonna set me back more than the console it's self.

Thanks for the help. Hope I'm no wasting your time.

 

[Xian Xi]

If it was only a matter of swapping parts it would be easy. It's a programming issue. You can't just swap parts to make it faster.

If you're talking about the backup memory you can mod it and use bank switching I'm guessing.

 

[smkdan]

You can add up to 1MB of backup memory but there's no point unless some third party enhancement takes advantage of it. You can also up the BIOS capacity to 1MB but the previous point counts here too.

There's not much you can do with it. No extra room for memory even on the CDZ that had vacant RAM pads. Faster 68k won't help load times as that isn't the bottleneck (bus transfer rate is in the megabytes per second). There's a proprietary CD interface and a microcontroller on the drive PCB will have custom SNK code that no one knows anything about I assume. There aren't many people here with the know-how or desire to reverse engineer it and that'd have to be one of the steps involved in upping the drive speed.

 

[Xian Xi]

Having owned both the CDZ and Top Loader I can tell you that I was shocked at how much faster the CDZ performs just from having that much more memory in the mix. I was purely skeptical when I first bought it.

If you absolutely must have a CD based Neo system then go for the CDZ.

 

[metallizer]

There's a proprietary CD interface and a microcontroller on the drive PCB will have custom SNK code that no one knows anything about I assume. There aren't many people here with the know-how or desire to reverse engineer it and that'd have to be one of the steps involved in upping the drive speed.

That´s the main thing that could be done to improve the performance in my view, somehow get the ngcd bios to talk to a IDE interface computer CD drive.

 

[Neo Alec]

Fighting games and Samurai RPG are going to be bad no matter which system you use. The CDZ is just marginally better, but it's still bad. But for sidescrollers/shooters that merely load between stages, the regular CD system really is fine.

 

[EngineersCake]

Well that's a bummer. I'd hoped it be easier. I guess that's why nobody (And I did hours or searching lastnight) has talked about modding the NGCD to make it faster. I figured with all the the b!tching about the load times I've seen on YouTube that somebody would have tackled it.

Another question I have is: Why are there no pictures of the NGCD system board anywhere? I see the pictures of the AES board all the time. Weird. Furthermore there are no SNK products on iFixit.com. That was disappoing as well.

I think what I'm going to do is buy a NGCD and crack it open, photograph it like a Victoria's Secret model and use it to play my two favorite games. (Metal Slug and 1942) Maybe I can talk one of the people here in to hacking the BIOS to read an IDE 4X CD-ROM in exchange for a BIOS hacked NGCD with a 4X CD-ROM. (-:

If nothing comes of that and the loading times are that awful makybe a consolized MVS or an MVS with a Supegun Are in my future.

As always thank you for your time. Any more input is greatly appreciated.

 

[smkdan]

There's a few PCB pics on:
http://neogeocdworld.info/html/fiche/cartemere.htm
hosted by kuk.

It might be a better idea to just go with the Z, I don't expect anyone to tackle it anytime soon.

 

[EngineersCake]

There's a few PCB pics on:
http://neogeocdworld.info/html/fiche/cartemere.htm
hosted by kuk.

It might be a better idea to just go with the Z, I don't expect anyone to tackle it anytime soon.

Would work much better if I spoke french. (-:

 

[Xian Xi]

Use google language tools.

 

[SNKorSWM]

IIRC, I think NeoTurfMasta had posted about the overheating being caused by a metal plate blocking ventilation.

 

[EngineersCake]

Time to break out the screwdriver and plasma cutter... if the Z really is the way to go.

Does anybody know of a storefront like SKYWAYPRO that sells neogeo equipment?