Whoah... get this:

I swapped out my wiring harness in my car (still using my old Mk2 sled) with my Mk2a harness and was having the same issues. Also checked all wiring I could see, including wiring for the amps etc.

So I come home and pull out the backup Mk2 to put the drives in so I can send the Mk2a out to Eutronix for repair. As I open the quirky player, something looks wrong. The drive tray is sitting in the player at an angle. Odd. Could the drive cable be pulling the tray so hard its on an angle? Then I realize that I had mounted the drives onto the tray backwards then put the tray in the player backwards. Oh boy. As I take the side screws out, I hear a clunk of metal. Having the tray in there backwards pulled on the anti-shock bumpers so hard that they ripped out of the bracket they hook into.

Could this have been causing my problems (putting it back together as I type this to test it out)? Maybe something was getting shorted? Or maybe that funny angle was pulling on the cable so hard that a borderline solder connection for the IDE header was pulling loose?

Weird. Maybe I should be surprised that in all the times I've opened up empegs for hard drive swaps, this is the first time I've done something like this.