Q:How many wires are there needed to be soldered while installing the TNA-19 modchip?
A:There are totally 23 wires to be soldered for installing All the TNA-19 modchip.

Q:Is the wiring critically sensitive?
A:Improper wiring could possibly lead to a problem of Intermittent. To avoid this problem you are highly recommended to follow strictly the installation criteria bellows,

1.	be sure that there is 2 grounding (being marked as GND 1 & 2) wires and 1 VCC wire to be soldered by using wires of thicker or better conductivity,
2.	the shorter the better while you are wiring the connections of the signal wires and,
3.	be sure to clean all the soldered points with a soft dissolver (Solvent) by means of an old toothbrush in order to prevent from noise interference happened while operating or gaming on the console which may cause same problem of intermittence.

Q: What is the main difference between TNA-19 and TNA-14?
A:All the features and specifications are the same with TNA-14 except that the TNA-19 has additional 1MB flash memory on board which allows your console to play all the DVD titles in despite whatever the regional restriction is.

Q:Why do I get the "TV system doesn't match" error massage on the screen while trying to play a DVD movie?
A: The TV screen will show this error massage, if you attempt to play a PAL movie on a NTSC console. This is due to a limitation in the DVD player software and currently there is no way around this.

Q: Will the console suffer laser burnout syndrome?
We were reported from time to time by our distributors regarding the syndrome of PSTwo laser burnout which remind us to think of the similar laser burn out syndrome happened at the very beginning stage of the debut of PS2 50000 series. That issue was a question of controversy lasting for months and, as times goes by, getting invisible and now, it comes 70000 series again.
After had a market survey and failure analysis over several dead PSTwo provided by our customers we concluded our investigation and analysis about this syndrome into 3 major points as stated below which may cause the burnout of laser module (More precisely saying is the Tracking coil instead of the laser diode burnout).

Now, let’s elaborate the aforementioned as follows;

1). The design of PSTwo itself has a weak point on the interaction circuitry in between laser Ass’y and its servo control on its very beginning stage.

Every design shall have its weak point or so called marginal design which could only be found on the very beginning stage of its debut on the market. Many design bugs were not easily to be found in the lab due to that so many usage environments were changing dramatically and which were unpredictable in the lab; so as to PSTwo itself. If someone has to say that PSTwo shall have its weak point and/or marginal design, then it must be the servomechanism as where involves a lot of high voltage and rush current etc complicate design, any negligence of the complicate factors may easily crash the machine out of work.

If this marginal design is intentionally plotted by Sony in order to confine the usage of the media to be the original games or DVD titles only, then certain protection circuit is needed to limit the use of media in order to prevent from the laser burnout; On the other hand, rather than marginal design, I firmly believe that this syndrome is due to a design weak point occurred in a negligence occasion; In such a case then you don’t have to worry about it as Sony will correct the weak point sooner or later. As to the dead laser console, if you’ve got one, it could only be attributed to your bad luck.

2). Improper installation caused malfunction of the control circuitry and lead to the failure of the laser Ass’y.

From the failure analysis of the dead PSTwo(s), we found that most of the installation of the modchip on the console which we had investigated are not being installed strictly follow our installation instruction; we summarized the improper installations into 4 major problems as below;

a). miss leading of the soldering wire or bad soldering point and/or solder point being short circuit to the adjacent solder point.

b). inadequate wires being used on the wiring of VCC (power supply) and GND1 & GND2; please be aware of that for the wiring the point of VCC and GND(s) you have to consider using a better conductive and/or bigger diameter wire.

c). lacking of one grounding (GND) wire; we have to remind you that there are 2 wires of Grounding(GND) for better noise immunity on Mars Pro modchip in order to prevent from laser burnout, just 1 point(GND1 or GND2 only) grounding is not adequate.

d). the remaining solder bridge and/or the soldering paste on the main board which may cause the short circuit and/or electric leakage on the main board and lead to the laser burnout; Please be sure, by using a toothbrush come with some PCB cleaning liquid on it, to clean all the re-soldered soldering point in order to prevent from any unnecessary remaining on the main board.

3). Bad designed high current consuming Modchip being putting on a marginal designed PSTwo’ power supply system induced noise interference over the DSP IC which may cause a random malfunction inside the DSP IC and lead to the burnout of the Tracking coil or laser Ass’y.

There are some bad designed modchip which consumes nearly 200 mA of current in comparison to Mars Pro’s less than 10 mA; during the time interval of patching the peak current could be possibly ten times higher than normal of the current could probably reaching 2000 mA; under such a circumstance the peak current could be possibly induced a lot of noise interference which may cause the malfunction of the DSP IC and, as a result, lead to the burnout of the laser module.

By adopting a newly developed LLP (Low Power Patching) technology, Mars Pro consumes less than 10 mA in order to provide more immunity of Noise Interference which makes Mars Pro modchip more stable and more reliable particularly for this problem and in the meantime, makes longer MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) possible.

>>Laser protection circuitries
To provide some protections for laser module probably could make you feel safer. There are several categories of protection circuitry which, attributed to different protection theories, are available now on the market up to your choice; by hereinafter we’d like to give you a briefing all over those differences of the protection circuitry and its related protection theory in between as well as the tradeoff it might exist for your pre-studying and selecting purpose.
1). Diode fix
The schematics shown on fig. 1 is a basic differential amplifier it functions like a drive of the tracking coil and/or focusing coil in PSTwo for driving the laser lens being pulled back into the right orbit and/or corrected position.
This Diode fix is designed to provide a “clamping” function on both the input of the Differential Amplifier to get rid of the noise being imposed on the inputs in order to prevent from excessive output current occurred on driving Tracking/focusing coil.

Fig. 1 Differential Amplifier with Diode fixes Fig. 2 Protection board of Diode fix

2). Gain fix
This Gain fix is designed to be applying on the same Differential Amplifier mentioned above. Instead of “clamping” function of the Diode fix, Gain fix is to put an additional resister in parallel with the Gain control resister in order to reduce the resistance so as to reduce the output current of the Differential Amplifier and, as a result, minimized the possibility of laser burnout.
This Gain fix is the simplest and cheapest way of protection on the market; it certainly has its tradeoff of reducing the reading ability of PSTwo as the capability of tracking/focusing of the laser lens has been diminished.

Fig. 3 Differential Amplifier with Gain fix Fig. 4 Picture of after installation of Gain fix

3). vanDrunen fix
A Dutch guy Mr. vanDrunen considered that the laser burnout is caused by allowing too much of current being flowed into the tracking/focusing coil so, what we have to do is only to provide a current limitation circuitry in prior to the VCC of the Mechacon IC (LA6508) to confine the supplying current as well as the output current of the Mechacon IC within a certain safe range to prevent from the burnout of the coil in the laser module.

Fig. 5 Protection board of vanDrunen fix

4). PIC fix
Some people attribute the failure of tracking/focusing coil to the malfunctions of the DVD/CD DSP IC, so that they devised a Micron IC (12C508) in order to monitor the operation status of the DSP IC. Once the malfunction of the DSP IC has been detected by the Micron IC, the Micron IC will send out a signal to shut down the reading process of the PSTwo in order to protect the laser module from burnout.
Fig. 6 is a dual functioned protection circuitry of a combination of vanDrunen fix and PIC fix provided for your reference purpose.

Fig. 6 a vanDrunen fix and PIC fix combined protection circuitry

>>For more information about the installation of the protection board please refer to here.

Wrap up
Every aforementioned laser protection circuitries all have their respective theory of protection; it’s a controversial question that which one is good or not good, you might be suggested to try and error for each proposal for certain; but you must be aware of that every counter measurement, like the usage of medicine, all has its side effect, more or less. Generally the side effect of adding protection is the reducing of the ability of reading variety of media. Thus is, for your console’ good it’s better to limit the reading capability rather than burn out the laser lens.