It shouldn't be drastically different from a more modern PSU. If anything, the worst you will fine when you open it is that the caps have leaked/exploded or there might be signs of components having burnt. Just don't open it with the AC/Mains power connected to it and you should be fine. Also, don't go licking the caps to see if they are still works, poking angry dogs, or walking down dark alleys with cash hanging out. It's all just common sense.
Break out a meter if you know how to work with electronics, start testing stuff. To test any caps that look good and you are in doubt of, you may have to unsolder them from the PSU board, or just raise on trace (if it's surface-mounted).
Obviously, check for burnt components/smells around affected areas/etc...
Getting it open may be difficult though, depending on how they put it together. Back then, they have may screwed the cases shut, but most (modern) Power supplies for external devices are just sonic-welded around the edges, or just plain glued.
If you can find out what the outputs of the plug are (assuming it is a plug) you can create your own PSU. Even if it's just 12v/3v/5v, etc... you may be able to work something out with a modern drive-case PSU.
I have hard drive and optical external cases that are USB/FW/etc... that use a mini-din connector to connect a PSU, and found that damn near all the PSU with the same connector are pretty standard. I must have a box full of power supplies for external drive cases, that when I just "inserted" one into another, it just seems to have the proper voltage lines/wires in the right place on all the plugs. You may have luck using one of those to power it, even if you have to re-wire it.
Good luck, and it looks like you got an interesting piece of history. I used to have one of the original CD-R drives back in late-1994 that I think cost my dad's company close to $7-11k USD in a machine my dad used at home for development for the controllers for the HVA/C systems. My dad's job was to write the code, send it out to the field for testing, but floppies were too small for some of the code he wrote when it compiled. Because compression that was tight enough was not available, they bought 2-3 drives for the office, and my dad scored one for his 486 that his office bought for him to use at home (since he traveled a lot, he was the only person I know who actually had 3 computers, one computer at work, one and home, and a dell laptop with a 386 CPU). Anyways, my dad would write the code, burn it to disc (with discs that sometimes cost up to $100+ and could go bad easily if the computer even had the mouse move when the cd was burning, but that still wasn't guaranteed) and then ship it in a insured mailer to techs in places like minnesota and the like for installing.
I later got that drive, but it was damn-near useless when I got it because I couldn't find good enough CD-R quality that it would burn reliably on. So I ended up ditching it (the drive) but also the computer (the computer later broke) and gave up on it. If you get this working, I would be interested in seeing if anything is on the disc. If it's got mac software, be sure to let us know!
(Interestingly, a burner in 1997 for CDs cost about $150 for an ATAPI drive that you could get with dell, can't recall the model it shipped on, but it was an option, but you had to forgo something inside the machine because of the length of it. must've been a custom solution. my dad got one of these at work later, the drive was notorious for going out within weeks of getting it out of repair)
