My CD drive can read data files with no problem. However, when I pop in an audio CD, my CD can't read the audio CD. What do I do?

I have a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive.
running Mandrake 9.1, KDE, kernel: 2.4.21-0.13mdk

In my case reading music CDs required connecting the audio output of the cdrom unit to the sound card. If you have onboard sound there should be a connector someplace on your motherboard for this. The wire came with my cdrom unit but the guy who helped me build the box hadn't connected it because he thought he was a Windows addict.

If the hardware is already connected, then check mixer settings (maybe aumix?) to make sure volume isn't turned all the way down.

So your CD-ROM didn't even detect an audio CD until you plugged that output into the sound card? That's weird because in Windows XP, it works fine.

are you getting an error message?
are you trying to mount it? (can't mount audio cd's)

This is the error I get when I pop an audio cd to my DVD Drive:
Unable to enter file:/mnt/cdrom2. You do not have access rights to this location.

This is the error I get when I pop an audio CD to my CD-R/CD-RW Drive:
Unable to enter file:/mnt/cdrom. You do not have access rights to this location.

So what's going on? can someone please help me?!?!???
I just want to listen to music CD's while I surf the net

if I run "kscd" and put the audio CD in my DVD-ROM drive, it plays fine!

How do I tell linux (Mandrake 9.1, KDE) that I want my CD-RW drive to be the default CD audio player?

Audio CD's do not have a filesystem so you can't mount them. Mandrake uses supermount which means that you do not have to use the mount command to mount data CD's. Actually just browsing to /mnt/cdrom will mount the device and after a default period of time the device unmounts.

Just start one of the CD player applications. The default device is /dev/cdrom. So you need to configure the player to the device that you want to play music from.

And yes you need an audio cable between the cdrom device and the sound card. Linux unlike Windows XP does not have digital audio extraction yet. Also verify that the audio mixer has the volume control up for the device you want to play music on.

Will Mandrake 9.2 have this digital extraction feature?

Despite the problems I'm having with Mandrake, I really like it for some odd reason. I hope they start making games and drivers for linux. I can't get my Radeon 9700 Pro working and therefore can't play any games. i'm hoping Mandrake 9.2 will fix these issues.

A quick look at MDK's website didn't give a clue on the new features in 9.2.

There have been a few posts on the Radeon 9700. A search on the site might help.

I did look for some 9700 Posts but a lot of them are confusing. I actually started another thread about this but nobody has replied. I'm sure everyone is sick of the ATI Radeon issue so nobody bothers to reply anymore.

If it were a simple solution, everyone would be giving me suggestions and instructions. That has yet to happen so I'll forget 3d acceleration and use Windows XP for games at the moment. Oh well. I really hope Mandrake 9.2 will fix this problem!