I have a Panasonic SW-9571-CYY drive mounted in a Meritline Map-Y51C1 enclosure (Item #: 197-017-001). The drive tested OK in another enclosure. All indications are the electronics in the Meritline encloseure are bad, but I wanted to make sure before scrapping it. I notice there is a red & black 2 lead pigtail coming from the controller, but not connected to anything. I also notice that there is a 2 pin header at the far left side of drive next to the audio connector (when viewing from the rear) with nothing connected. I don't want to arbitrarily connect it not knowing what it does. I'd hate to ruin a perfectly good drive. Any thoughts?

I see it is actually a Panasonic SW-9576C... same pinout.

Hello trasco!

If you have a SW-9576.C than you have the latest Panasonic DVD RAM cardridge drive (as far as I know!, when I got my SW-9576-C it was not even listed at Panasonic.co.jp and Panasonic.com, so there may be a newer drive but I guess not, since the drive is available since ~May 2007).

But now to your problem. First if you are not technically skilled I would not do any experiments with this very expensive drive! I'd do my tests with an old CD ROM drive or DVD ROM drive! Only as a hint.

Your description sounds like bridge board with the USB and/or Firewire does not have any connection to the power supply of the enclosure. I don't think it is for audio. Notmally the audio connector is a 4 pin plug or two 2 pin plugs (a red-black and a black-white colored pair).

I guess your enclosure looks like this one. It is from the US Mapower site:

http://www.mapower.com/Product.asp?CateID=4&LineID=2#

I also have a collection of Mapower enclosures and they work perfect even with my SW-9576-C and SW-9574-C

I'd look if your described pair of red-black wires has lost the connection to the external power supply. I'd look in the area of the power supply plug if there are 2 unused pins. If you are lucky the two pins have a marking with a "+" or a "-" or both. The red wire should be connected to "+" and the black one to "-".

But be aware, if you do something wrong, you can destroy the bridge board and the drive!

The open pins on the rear of the drive were for Digital Out, which isn't being used. As to the flying lead, I put a meter on it and it's cold. Silkscreened on the board near the header is +5. + and -. A good indication that the board needs +5V from the power supply. I can't see anything with it mounted so will pull the Power Supply assembly out and take another look for a 2 pin header with 5V on it.

I was going to send you a link to the packaged drive on Meritline's website, but I see they already pulled it. I guess I'm not the only one who had trouble. FYI, the enclosure is the same as the link you sent me. Mine uses the old Oxford 911 chipset which, in most circumstances, isn't Mac compatible. I've tried both the 912 and 924 chipsets and they work OK.