ok
call me stupid if i make no sense but
DO YOU HAVE SCSI HARDWARE ON YOUR COMPUTER?
scsi emulation and scsi hardware support are different questions of the kernel configuraton file.
i mean if u don't have scsi cd burner u need emulate scsi to burn cd's ... uhhh right?

To answer your original question, no I do not have any scsi hardware on my computer, but to get the option for enabling scsi emulation to appear you have to enable scsi support. Most how-to's suggest to enable scsi, scsi generic and scsi-cdrom drivers, some go so far as to say that you dont need ide-cdrom compiled for it to work properly but I have not been able to test that out as scsi emulation seems to hang my computer.

"i mean if u don't have scsi cd burner u need emulate scsi to burn cd's "

This statement confuses me because during my last few posts I have emphasized that my problem is with scsi emulation, hence I must be using scsi emulation to be having a problem with it.

what i m trying to say is
remove scsi support from the kernel
make sure that when u click on scsi support, like yourself said, u have to do it to get to the scsi emulation option, only the "enable scsi emulation" option is checked and nothing esle.
i think i did mention about knoppix linux
if you have two separeted cd drives boot knoppix,not from the cd burner, and try to erase a cdr-rw or burn some data on it. no music cd's yet. then look at the config files.
knoppix have a kernel config file in /boot .... assuming that u did try knoppix. have u managed to erase a cdr-rw and or burn data to it? now open the config file on a text editor, look at the scsi stuff and use the example here to recompile your kernel.
my experience is most from a lapbox with a cd writer and dvd combo and the redhat install that i m using treats it as

cd: /dev/cdrom
dvd /dev/scd0 (when playing dvd's i click on the dvd button and let the software mount the drive. (xine)

the search path is (k3b)
/usr/bin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/sbin
/usr/local/sbin
/schily/sbin
/sbin

peaple argue about it, some even say it dosn't matter but this setup NEVER failed me
on a pc the cd burner should be set to slave with your main drive on the first IDE
if you have a dvd or another cd on the second IDE the burner also has to be the slave drive.

I tried using the primary IDE and got the same results. I know that knoppix will generate a .config file but there arent any configurations that I haven't tried. I dont know if I totally understand "only the "enable scsi emulation" option is checked and nothing else" because you cant have scsi emulation checked but not have any scsi support, the help for scsi emulation even tells you to enable scsi and scsi generic. If you mean to disable ide-cdrom I have tried that. I have tried compiling into kernel as well as modules for all optoins relevant to my cd-burner. I am now wondering if there is a way that I can avoid the scsi-emulation loading at boot and load it later once I have logged in? At least that way I should be able to avoid a hard shutdown and maybe get some more accurate logs.

On a side note I have to say that although I have been very pleased with linux the past few months that I have been using it and never plan to return to windows this problem has me vexed byond beleief. For starters I have a hard time beleiving that I am the only one who has ever expereinced such a problem and my feedback although somewhat generous has not really gotten me any further in solving my problem. The bottom line is that this drive works in windows, but in Linux my system stops when trying to load scsi emulation. Since I cant find similair problems I almost have to believe that it is a configuration problem on my box that I made, is there file output I could post that would be helpful in determining this? Please let me know, it has been a month since I spent good money on a nice cd burner and I have yet to be able to put it to use, I dont have tons of time on my hands between work and school eventually I am going to have to go with what works no matter whether if I really like it or not because my studies have been suffering.

from your first post i think:
Plextor 52x CD-R, Debian Woody 2.4.22

This is going to be hard to get straight because I have been through so much in the past few days but I will do my best.

I wanted to use K3B to burn CD's. My cd-burner was detected and I could mount filesystems from it. It told me that I needed SCSI emulation. I couldnt find it in my kernel configuration so I ended up making alot of changes. For a while I had links from '/dev/cdrom -> /dev/scd0' and append="hdc=ide-scsi" in my lilo.conf. cdrecord -scanbus was still unable to access scsi devices. I then read a how to that had me 'rm /dev/cdrom' and then 'ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/scd0' which still didnt work right. I ended up doing a './MAKEDEV' to re-create all scsi devices and hdc which I had messed up pretty bad with the magical 'rm' command. A friend had me remove IDE support from my kernel and just use scsi, still doesnt work. So I recompiled another version of my kernel with ide-cdrom support and now the burner is not even being detected.

since that you have made lot's of changes on config files it's hard to (for us n00b33's)to keep up with them all since we don't have access to your machine so .....have yourself a beer or two, and read on....
oh well, have another one just to make sure.
ok
debian IZ a very good distro, don't get me wrong. but i think that you should get yourself a copy or red hat 9... (download) canned kernel is 2.4.20-8 PICK WORKSTATION WITH KDE DESKTOP.
don't logon as user yet, log as root and browse to http://freshrpms.net/apt/ get apt and install it like this: rpm -i packagename.rpm. Also get synaptic (very cool X front end for apt) i m saying that because i know that debian uses it as the default package manager and installer, this version of apt is made to work with red hat 9. i have it and it works fine!
good luck

Thanks, Ill do it if I have time. Like I said it is something that I am running out of. The reason I picked debian was because of its minimal install, I like to be in controll of things. Although I think I will give redhat a try. Aside from that what configs do you want to see?

I would just like to say that I finally found a solution for this problem. For some reason on certain hardware running 2.4.22 this was a bug. I tried both '2.4.23-rc1' and '2.4.22-ac4' and both got my cd-burner working. Just a little kernel patching was all :] I am currently using 2.4.23-rc1 as I dont know what alan has been doing to his kernel and frankly it scares me, sides he doesnt have a changelog.

me still runs 2.4.20-8 canned from redhat.
glad u did it, good luck