Dissappearing SuperDrive in G4 MDD

I have a Power Mac G4 MDD with factory-installed SuperDrive and it's playing hide-and-seek.
The SuperDrive dissappears randomly, System Profiler reports nothing but a hard drive. I have checked and double-checked cables (it's in cable-select mode) and everything seems to be fine. I swapped a SD from similar G4 but same stuff continued. This is driving me crazy!
What's wrong? Can this be a hardware issue or is it software? I havent dared to try a re-install yet and installing it from CD does not seem to be a good idea.

Hi, why are you using cable select? I have heard that works for newer hard drives, but I wouldn't expect it to work for a superdrive. Have you tried just setting the hd to master and the superdrive to slave? That might be a more stable environment.
HTH,
~FifthWheel

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    Jump all hard drives Cable Select and place the intended Master on the end connector of each IDE ribbon (each bus).
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