Issue resolved, I ended up inspecting the terminal in which the JST connects and there were a few cold joints, resoldering them was sufficient

So I swapped the drive with a "new" one from a panasonic XV-10, works great, reads discs like a champ and even has intact drive rails, ejecting looks steady - however for some reason when I power it on, it'll just randomly eject, even after I close the tray, it'll just eject again after cl...