Problems with Pioneer 106 in G4 DP450

[Eric O. Gold]

I just purchased two Pioneer DVR-106D "SuperDrives" from OWC at 
MacWorld SF ($135 ea.), as replacement for the original optical drive 
that came with my PowerMac G4. Here are my machine specs:

Powermac G4, DP 450 MHz ("Gigabit Ethernet")
896mb RAM
Mac OS 10.3.2

The installation went without a hitch and I went about immediately 
burning some CDs. However upon attempting to burn a third CD I 
immediately got a message saying the burn failed. I couldn't even eject 
the unburned CD as the drive wouldn't respond to either the Eject 
keyboard button, nor pressing the eject button on front of the drive 
itself. It took a reboot to get the drive "back", but this behavior was 
consistently repeated after 1 or 2 burns. Rebooting only fixes the 
problem temporarily. In addition, after this behavior there was a 
change in what the System Profiler reported on the drive:

Before burning problems:

PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D:
   Manufacturer:	PIONEER
   Model:	PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D
   Revision:	1.07
   Serial Number:	CLDC446233WL
   Drive Type:	CD-RW/DVD-RW
   Disc Burning:	Apple Supported/Shipped
   Removable Media:	Yes
   Detachable Drive:	No
   Protocol:	ATAPI
   Unit Number:	0
   Socket Type:	Internal

Immediately after burning problems, these two lines are *missing* from 
the description:
Manufacturer:	PIONEER
Disc Burning:	Apple Supported/Shipped

The drive acts as if it loses power after either some period of time or 
activity. After manually ejecting a disk, the tray has to be re-closed 
manually - as if there is no power coming to the drive.

Here is what I tried (unsuccessfully) to troubleshoot the problem:
1. Since I had purchased a second drive for a friend, I tried swapping 
the drives.
2. Reset the PRAM
3. Hit the reset switch on the motherboard
4. Confirmed that the jumper on the drive was in the "Master" position

OWC tech support doesn't know what the problem is. Haven't tried using 
the drive with iDVD yet.

Any ideas out there?

TIA, Eric Gold