These terms, referring to hardware, are not Linux specific,
and so are equally used in the Micro$oft Windoze matrix.

1) SMP - Symmetric MultiProcessing
Two or more similar processors connected via a high-bandwidth link and managed by one operating system.

Do you have more than one processor in your machine?
I would guess not, so you do not need an SMP kernel.

However, let us see what you do actually have installed.
What is the output of

rpm -qa | egrep kernel

2) APIC -- Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller
A Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC) that can handle interrupts from and for multiple CPUs.

Can we check to see what parameters you are passing to the kernel from your /boot/grub/grub.conf file?

Corin: for rpm -qa command, the output is:

kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.31-13
kernel-2.4.20-8
kernel-source-2.4.20-8

I use lilo to boot so here is lilo.conf

..........

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
read-only
append="hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

other=/dev/hda1
optional
label=dos

....................

appreciate your help

Thanks for providing the information.

That eliminates the possibility that the error was coming from an
SMP and or APIC issue.

Would you be able to do two tests?

1) Are you able to blank a CD-RW? Does that give you any errors?

2) Then, instead of writing your image to disk in TAO mode, can
you try and write it DAO mode to your CD-RW disk?

(Better to do all this with CD-RWs than end up with a pile of CD-R coasters.)

Please report back on any errors or successes, and keep an eye
on your kernel.log for SCSI errors while you try this.

As far as blanking goes, that was never a problem. I mentioned this before, but I was actually able to burn 2 CD's before, and I dont think I did anything different. Burning in DAO mode brings up the same error as before. Could it be a bad compatibility with the drive???

Bad compatibility?

Are you using a different brand?
And which brand is giving the failure?

As you are ony trying to write at 4x speed, that should not be a problem.

The brand I always use is Memmorex. What I ment by bad compatibility was that maybe the device itself was not compatible with Linux, or SCSI emulation. But that doesnt make sence considering all IDE drives are pretty much the same. This one is 52X24X52 so its pretty new. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Can we just confirm if you are trying to write to a CD-RW?

And when you fire up cdrecord, does it give this message?

cdrecord: Drive needs to reload the media to return to proper status.

Yes I am mostly trying to write to a CDRW, and yes most of the time it does say that the media needs to be reloaded, then it opends and closes the drive. I have also tried non rewriteable media, which gave a slightly different error message, which is also posted in this forum, above.

The problem is that your drive it would appear is not to happy with the
brand of CD-RW you are using. Before running cdrecord, eject the
disk and manually reseat it in the tray. If this does not work, it could
be that either your disk is a bit warped or the tray is, or just that that
particular type of CD-RW is not really liked by your CD writer.

Please note that not all CD-RWs are of the same material, they use
different dyes in different brands.

My suggestion is to try a different brand and see if that still gives a problem. I do not think that this is a software / configuration issue.

If there is an updated firmware for the drive, then it would not hurt
to do an upgrade.

Hmmm.... I am getting pretty confused. I dont think Its a hardware problem because I have done numerous burns in Windows and never had a problem. I can just hope that by the time Red Hat 10 comes out it will work.... Thanks for your time and help. If you come up with anything else, please email me. yashalif@cogeco.ca Thanks again.