neogeo cd disk i/o errors..help pls!!

Hey, I just got a neogeo cd from ebay, and whenever I try to play my games I have with it, after playing for 15 minutes or so, when the neo goes to load the next stage the screen goes black and i get this message....
Disk i/o error
(id=0003)
Can anyone help me identify the problem?! Is my new neo bad already? or could this be disc problems? I have tried 5 games and they all eventually do this. Pls help if u can

yeah its fucked, all neo cd's have this problem, recently there has been a lot of posting about this problem. my guess is the guy knew it was fucked in the first place and bunged it on ebay, does happen a lot. i very sorry to hear you got this problem to, a couple of years back i had the same thing happen to me, but back then there was no neo-geo.com and noone even knew these system had the problem!.

What exactly is the problem though? The CD drive or what? I mean can it be fixed?

the lens is out of alinment and can not be fixed, sorry to say its probably just a trophy now!

First of all, are your games originals and not CDR? Anyway try cleaning them.

try cleaning the lens, mine did that and after cleaning it and poking it from side to side it worked perfect.

The games that came with it are CDR i have no origianls to try..could that be the problem? And what did you clean the lens with?

i cleaned it with a dry piece of cloth round the end of my finger. Cd-R's are not as reliable as original cd's, you could try cleaning the discs or better still try and copy them to a new cd-r using disc juggler on your pc.

I actually did try re-copying with discjuggler, on my kof 96..and it went a little further into the game, about 5 matches in before i got the error, the other cdr that came with it only would make it 3 matchees in. I will try cleaning the lens, but what did you mean when you said that you poked it side to side?

when you look at the lens you will notice it has a little play in it, all i did was just move it from side to side, though i would not really recommend this as fix but if it doesnt work anyway what have you got to loose?, its just that i always try things like that. I would say it sounds like its out of line and cant read the disc properly more so than dirty discs. Maybe the console was thrown about bit during shipping and this caused the problem.

there's a good chance originals will work much better.

OK I cleaned the lens like you said, and tried playin through my copy of RBFF2 and it still gives me the error msg, as the same point in the game...when i try and continue. On my KOF games there is no exact point when it does this, but it seems to be around 3 to 4 matches into the game, I think maybe i'll buy a cheap original to try i dunno..i've already spent too much on this thing for it not to work heh. Does is sound to you more like its the copys or the sysytem itself?

Dr_Ackula said:

The games that came with it are CDR i have no origianls to try..could that be the problem? And what did you clean the lens with?

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Yup, THAT is the problem. The NGCD has a copy protection to prevent people like you to play CDR with it. You will always get this error after some loads, so you can only use CDR as some sort of demo, in order to decide if it is worth it to buy the real deal

I think maybe i'll buy a cheap original to try i dunno..i've already spent too much on this thing for it not to work heh

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Well, I think most NGCD games are cheap enough to try them, so do yourself a favor and buy some originals.

cd-rs work fine on older games, on the newer ones they had basic copy protection, but these days most copy programs can copy it perfectly anyway. it sounds like your lens is fucked cos i got the same message with my neo after a few rounds. i wonder if its the cd-rs that cause the neo to fuck up like this?

On Wednesday I got that error in all of my games. I would get about half way through a game then that error screen would pop up. Then on Thursday my system wouldn't play any of my games at all. My system powers up perfectly and goes to the CD player screen but it won't play any games. All of my games are original and in mint condition. I cleaned the lens and it still wouldn't play any of my games.

Here is what the Neo Geo CD Instruction Manual has to say about this error:

"When playing discs that are excessively damaged or dirty, the error message on the right may appear. The Error message will also appear when the flap cover is opened in the NOW LOADING stage, or when the console receives shock on an unstable place. When this message appears, turn the console off, clean the disc, and set it again. If the error message still appears, it may be from other cause than the above, so discontinue use of the disc and consult with the store at which you bought the product."

The CDz has copy protection - all other models DO NOT.

Games past 1996 I think have copy protection, cracks are available for those online.

However it is true that your system will disc error more often when using copies, but I think almost ever system has an occasional disc error copy or not.

So if you're going to play copies, good for you, but they definitely aren't perfect.