This is an external hard-drive/optical-drive enclosure. I've only been using it with hard-drives, and haven't tried an optical drive in it yet. The ME-340 is best used with the 2.6 kernel, which has better USB and Firewire support than the 2.4 series. I had problems with the 2.4 kernel.

Use the modprobe command to load the necessary modules.
USB modules needed: usbcore, usb_storage, ehci_hcd, ohci_hcd, uhci_hcd. Firewire (IEEE1394) modules needed: ieee1394, raw1394, sbp2, eth1394, ohci1394

The external drive mounts under the SCSI subsystem. Once the necessary modules are loaded, plug in the external drive and then read the contents of the /proc/scsi/scsi file; your external drive should be listed.

To mount, try one of the SCSI devices eg. mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt

Vendor's site: bytecc

Some useful links:
LinuxQuestions.org tutorial on usb and firewire drives
linux1394.org article on the sbp2 module for external firewire storage devices
Boot Linux from a Firewire drive