Alright guys, you asked for it. My Neo Geo CD modification is beyond any modification ever made for a home system. My NGCD has a fiber-optical output, component video output, internal cooling fan,and loads like the Dreamcast.....which doesn't load. I found some schematics to do the job, online, I don't remember where, so I bought a spare NGCD to try it. The mod is for increasing disc drive speed and memory. You have to understand how the NGCD works. It's really bizarre. For example, when you play a fighting game, it loads a long time and boom! You're fighting. Do you know why it loads so long? Besides it being a pretty old machine but it's loading all graphical data, gameplay, and sound effects and storing it onto the systems internal memory. Then the laser just reads the music right off the disc when you are fighting the round. So, whenever you are actually playing a game, it's not loading anything but the music because it's already stored on memory. All NGCD games is just a form of cart/MVS, but all the information is just thrown on a compact disc. You see, it loads long because Neo Geo games have tons of megs/memory. Put your NGCD games in your CD player to understand this. Never play the first track. This is called red-book audio. The internal memory is old for the machine and I used the Dreamcast's internal RAM, DRAM, VRAM, SRAM. My NGCD now has little to store on so much memory. That's one reason why it loads fast. All I did was unsoldered those chips and replaced them with NGCD's stock RAM chips. I had to drill new holes and run new circuit lines. You have to watch it though! Because the Dreamcast uses the Naomi board, it cannot be used in the NGCD. Some IC chips had to be left in the NGCD. I had to use circuit board testers to identify which chip was the Naomi board. That's the first step. Next, was to replace the CD drive. The NGCD uses a single-speed drive. Talk about slow! Like before, I also used the DC's disc drive. I even used the same laser lense. It works fine. Did I lose you guys? You see it loads all the data fast with faster drive and stores ( now the megs on the Neo games aren't that big anymore ) the memory with the replaced RAM and etc. This means that the memory on my NGCD isn't being fully utilized which results in no load times. It can store so much, I don't even have one bit of slowdown or cut frames of animation. I don't even see the loading screens at all in any of my NGCD titles. Which is good and bad. Good being because I don't have to see that annoying juggling monkey and bad being that I don't get to see the art and thumbnail animations during load times like in Samurai Shodown/Spirits 3. All I see is a black screen for not even a second and boom! I'm playing or seeing whatever. Now, for my video and audio enhancements. I did those myself. I had to sacrifice a really expensive DVD player. I had to use a Pioneer Elite DVD player. Regular DVD player parts will not work. I unattached the optical output and the component video RCA jacks and drilled new holes in the back of the NGCD. I totally scrapped the NGCD stock sound processors and used the DVD player's sound processors. You see, this works very well because 93% of all the NGCD games have digital audio on them. The only way you can utilize that digital audio is if you have fiber optical outputs or coaxial digital outputs. I went with the optical because it's better. If the NGCD games had a Dolby Digital, DTS, or Dolby Pro-Logic 2 bitstreams, I would recieve those signals via digitally. For the component video, all I had to do is use the high-res chip and replaced it from the stock S-Video booster chip. For the internal fan, again, I looked to the DC. The problem was that the AC jack had to be replaced because the cooling fan draws more power. I used the 125v 7a jack from the DC and installed it. Rerouting of power circuit lines had to be done. So gone is the NGCD's bizarre power pack. My modded NGCD is just like a DC but with better picture and sound quality. This right here is every AES/MVS's fanactic greatest dream. I tried to describe this modification as un-technical as possible so all of you can understand. Believe me, I can get worse! So get out there and look for those detailed schematics on the net! They are out there. Most people are hush-hush about this kind of stuff so it will be hard to find.....but not impossible. I'm trying to get some pics and video's of my machine to show off to the internet world. I'll keep you ALL posted on this website ( with the creator's permission of this website of coarse ) The NGCD system is probably the only system you can do something like this to because of the way it works and designed.
Reply With Quote
Sausage-in-training
Originally Posted by Matt
Bookmarks