Solo 5300 with Ubuntu will not play cd's
 

New to ubuntu, I just installed Feisty Fawn on a Gateway Solo 5300, P3 900 mhz, 384MB RAM. Installation was made from the machine's CD ROM and although it was slow as molasses, it did wenth through. Once installed, I tried to play a cd and the CD ROM went bananas, spinning very fast and I was unable to stop the drive or eject the disc. I stopped the show by turning off the computer. After that, I rebooted the system and this time the cd ejected fine. When I tried to play it again, I get all sorts of sounds with somewhat of a rithm out of the speakers (speakers are fine and the Ubuntu drums sound pretty cool). Now the cd rom is unable to mount the media, any media. Pushing the button of the cd door does open the drive as long as there is no cd inside. I also have issues with the PCMCIA slots and with the PCI card, but I'll list these separately. Help!!!
Looking around, I found an article that showed how to detect of the cd rom is present. in a terminal, I asked:
modim --devices

AND THIS IS WHAT I SAW:

modim: Warning: controller returns wrong size for CD capabilities page.
0 dev='/dev/hdc' rwrw-- 'Samsung' cd-rom SN-124

THE CD ROM WILL NOT HANDLE ANY MEDIA AND IT IS DIFFICULT TO STOP IT OR EJECT THE MEDIA, USUALLY REBOOTING GIVES A CHANCE TO EJECT.

Never mind, the laptop problems have all been resolved. I'm able to connect via wireless, my PCMCIA slots and my cd-rom work like a charm now. The system boots faster and the graphics are brighter.