There are several confirmed working drives for System 573. The official is listed above under known parts. However, several CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives do work as replacements. All of them, including the original drive, must have the jumper setting placed to 'master' in order to work properly.

Drives that are known to work with analog mixes are as follows:

• Compaq 179137-701
• LG GDR-8164B
• Lite-On LH-18A1H

Drives that are known to work with digital mixes are as follows:

• Lite-On XJ-HD166S
• Lite-On LTD-163
• Lite-On LTR-40125S
• Toshiba XM-5702B
• Matsushita SR8589B
• MITSUMI CRMC-FX4830T
• NEC CDR-1900A
• Panasonic CR594C
• SONY DRU-510A
• SONY DRU-810A
• LG GH22NP20 Multi DVD Rewriter
• TEAC CD-W552E

Most games that play on a System 573 require a 32MB flash card to operate. You cannot buy a regular PCMCIA card because the System 573 requires a linear flash type card. ATA (the common type) cards WILL NOT WORK! A few cards known to work are listed in the parts section above.

In most System 573s the RTC-RAM is soldered directly to the main board next to the BIOS. If you are lucky, when you go to replace your chip somebody will have done the hard work of socketing it for you. If this is not the case, you will need to first remove the old RTC-RAM chip via desoldering it. Afterwards, it is recommended to install a socket into the chip slot such that the new chip can be plugged in instead of soldered in.

Be careful when removing the chip. It is on the memory bus along with the BIOS and if you are not gentle you may break a trace. If you break a trace while swapping the RTC-RAM, you will get a unit that doesn't power on or boot loops. Careful tracing of the circuit and patching broken traces should get you going again, but try to avoid this by being gentle.

The main board (GX700) of a System 573 is identical for any game that runs on it. Most games have an IO board plugged into the expansion connector inside the unit which can be swapped out. If your GX700 has gone bad, a new board can be sourced by buying any System 573 game and swapping out the main board.

If the System 573 is stubborn to boot, runs through part of the bootup check and then reboots, or doesn't display the beginning boot sequence, you could have a bad or a loose BIOS. If the BIOS doesn't make a good connection it may have trouble starting but once the machine passes the boot check and starts loading from CD-ROM it will operate fine. Two solutions may help fix the problem:

1. Attempt to replace the BIOS with another BIOS chip. You can either burn a new EPROM with the same pinout using the BIOS from MAME, or you can buy a used EPROM from eBay and replace that.
2. Remove the socket and replace it with a new socket. If the old socket is loose or dirty, this will give better grip to the chip.

If your machine seems to reboot or power cycle when the CD-ROM drive starts to spin up, you may have a bad power supply. Check the +5V and +12V rails to ensure they are not sagging, especially when accessing the CD-ROM. This is especially noticeable during startup due to the likelihood that the game will be loading lots of data from the CD-ROM drive. If need be, a replacement power supply for the bad rails can be wired into the cab from a standard AT or ATX power supply (with the sense wires bridged).