is there a way to fix this? scd0 is my iomega usb burner. when i try to acess the cd in either or mdk 8.0 locks and have to hit the reset button.

There could be problems in 8.0. Have you looked at the errata on the MDK site? Is there any reason you have not gone to 9.1? A lot better handling of drive mounting.

well i already bought 3 distros. mandrake 8.0, rh 7.2 and the latest slack 9.0. rh i didnt care much for + i had smp issues exactly like i have w/ mdk 8.0. slack 9.0 i orig d/l and i locked up evertime duing the install process allthough i did install it and get it working but not to my likings from the install. i then went and bought the 4 cd along w/ a book and it kept locking up in the same area. i tried everything. so i went back to the 1 i was most comfy w/ mdk 8.0. and want to learn a thing or 2 about getting the system to work w/ my machine. so taking the hard way out i chose it. i tried looking on their the mdk sites but lost my product key. if anyone has 1 that i can grab thatd be wonderful. also i'm afraid to buy another distro i dont like or wont work w/ my system.

Hi,
While "locks up machine" , is a pretty good description, I think it may take a bit more than that to find out what is going on.
If you are using KDE or Gnome, open up an xterm and type <dmesg>. Look for any error messages concerning your CD-Writer and CD-Rom and make sure they are being identified correctly. For instance, the CD-Writer may be hdc and the CD-Rom may be hdd or somesuch.
Then <cd /var/log> and use the less command to look at the different logs for error messages (especially syslog and maybe syslog.0). You may need to su to root to do this.
You will need to be root to use the following command in an xterm windiw <cdrecord -scanbus>
Please post any error messages you find in /var/log/syslog or the other logs. Also post what is output after you type <cdrecord -scanbus> as root. Finally, post the contents of /etc/fstab since you are hinting that just mounting them locks everything up.
If I have misunderstood what you are trying to do , please correct me.

this is what i got w/ dmesg:

Linux version 2.4.3-20mdk (chmou@no.mandrakesoft.com) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release / Linux-Mandrake 8.0)) #1 Sun Apr 15 23:03:10 CEST 2001
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000003ffec000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000003ffec000 - 000000003ffef000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000003ffef000 - 000000003ffff000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 000000003ffff000 - 0000000040000000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
Warning only 896MB will be used.
Use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel.
On node 0 totalpages: 229376
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 225280 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
hm, page 01000000 reserved twice.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=linux-up ro root=305
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1152.643 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 2300.31 BogoMIPS
Memory: 899396k/917504k available (976k kernel code, 17720k reserved, 287k data, 696k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 262144 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.5.0 initialized
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000, vendor = 2
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: After vendor init, caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: After generic, caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: AMD Athlon(TM) XP 1800+ stepping 02
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0df0, last bus=2
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Unknown bridge resource 0: assuming transparent
PCI: Using IRQ router default [1022/7443] at 00:07.3
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x0b (Driver version 1.14)
Starting kswapd v1.8
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
block: queued sectors max/low 597621kB/466549kB, 1792 slots per queue
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus 00 device 39, VID=1022, DID=7441
PCI_IDE: chipset revision 4
PCI_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd800-0xd807, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd808-0xd80f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
hda: Maxtor 92720U8, ATA DISK drive
hdb: WDC WD800BB-32CCB0, ATA DISK drive
hdc: CREATIVE CD5233E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: Maxtor 92732U8, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 53177040 sectors (27227 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=3310/255/63
hdb: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=9729/255/63
hdd: 53369568 sectors (27325 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=52946/16/63
hdc: ATAPI 56X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Partition check:
hda: hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 >
hdd: hdd1 < hdd5 hdd6 >
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Uncompressing.......done.
Freeing initrd memory: 157k freed
Serial driver version 5.05 (2000-12-13) with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md.c: sizeof(mdp_super_t) = 4096
autodetecting RAID arrays
autorun ...
... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 8192 buckets, 64Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 262144 bind 65536)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device 03:05) ...
Using r5 hash to sort names
ReiserFS version 3.6.25
VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=3
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 696k freed
Adding Swap: 265032k swap-space (priority -1)
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device 03:45) ...
Using r5 hash to sort names
ReiserFS version 3.6.25
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device 03:06) ...
Using r5 hash to sort names
ReiserFS version 3.6.25
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device 03:07) ...
Using r5 hash to sort names
ReiserFS version 3.6.25
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device 16:45) ...
Using r5 hash to sort names
ReiserFS version 3.6.25
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device 16:46) ...
Using r5 hash to sort names
ReiserFS version 3.6.25
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xf8c96000, IRQ 9
usb-ohci.c: usb-02:08.0, NEC Corporation USB
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 3 ports detected
hub.c: USB new device connect on bus1/2, assigned device number 2
usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x553/0x2) is not claimed by any active driver.
usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xf8c98000, IRQ 11
usb-ohci.c: usb-02:08.1, NEC Corporation USB (#2)
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
hub.c: USB new device connect on bus2/1, assigned device number 2
usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x59b/0x55) is not claimed by any active driver. Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: CDRW9602EXT-B Rev: 8OS4
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured
USB Mass Storage device found at 2
USB Mass Storage support registered.
Linux video capture interface: v1.00
V4L-Driver for Vision CPiA based cameras v0.7.4
Parallel port driver for Vision CPiA based cameras v0.7.4
Winbond Super-IO detection, now testing ports 3F0,370,250,4E,2E ...
Winbond chip at EFER=0x2e key=0x87 devid=59 devrev=53 oldid=ff
Winbond unknown chip type
SMSC Super-IO detection, now testing Ports 2F0, 370 ...
0x378: FIFO is 16 bytes
0x378: writeIntrThreshold is 9
0x378: readIntrThreshold is 9
0x378: PWord is 8 bits
0x378: Interrupts are ISA-Pulses
0x378: ECP port cfgA=0x10 cfgB=0x48
0x378: ECP settings irq=7 dma=<none or set by other means>
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,EPP,ECP]
parport0: irq 7 detected
parport0: cpp_daisy: aa5500ff(38)
parport0: assign_addrs: aa5500ff(38)
parport0: cpp_daisy: aa5500ff(38)
parport0: assign_addrs: aa5500ff(38)
usb.c: registered new driver cpia
USB CPiA camera found
CPiA Version: 1.20 (2.0)
CPiA PnP-ID: 0553:0002:0100
VP-Version: 1.0 0141
3c59x.c:LK1.1.13 27 Jan 2001 Donald Becker and others. http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
See Documentation/networking/vortex.txt
eth0: 3Com PCI 3c905 Boomerang 100baseTx at 0xc400, 00:60:08:18:a5:cf, IRQ 5
product code 4b4b rev 00.0 date 06-11-97
8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/MII interface.
MII transceiver found at address 24, status 786f.
Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.
eth0: scatter/gather enabled. h/w checksums disabled
eth1: 3Com PCI 3c905 Boomerang 100baseTx at 0xc000, 00:60:08:61:03:6b, IRQ 10
product code 4b4b rev 00.0 date 10-10-97
8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, MII interface.
MII transceiver found at address 24, status 7849.
Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.
eth1: scatter/gather enabled. h/w checksums disabled
eth0: first available media type: MII
eth1: using default media MII
cmpci: version v2.41-nomodem time 23:13:10 Apr 15 2001
cmpci: found CM8738 adapter at io 0xc800 irq 10


what is the less command anyway. sorry never done this before

This is where I shine. Completely lost.
You might open an xterm window and type < less /etc/fstab > and post the output of this. Only type what is inside the < > things.
Also in an Xterm window, first type < su > , give it root's password when prompted, and then type < cdrecord -scanbus > and post the output of that. There is a space between cdrecord and -scanbus.
Less is a command that lets you view a file, allowing you to go back to the beginning of the file if it is a long one (unlike cat).

well the prob possibly was hda went bad on me. the drive is now outta the machine and installed slack 9.0 so now everything is going good.

Well, that and the fact that I heard the very early 2.4 kernels had quite a bit of problems. I'd think that 2.4.3 would qualify. Personally, I only started on Mandrake at 8.1 and promptly upgraded to 8.2. I might have even been running a 2.2 kernel on 8.1, can't remember.