I was never able to use the internal CD with W2K (machine came with NT4 installed, in 2000). I installed RH9 using my external Iomega CD-RW (USB), but that isn't recognized now either. When I click Mount on the User Mount Tool, I get 'mount: /dev/hdc is not a valid block device.' Before I changed it from /dev/cdrom I got a different message. My main desktop machine will work with either /hdc or /cdrom. I don't care about writing CDs from the laptop at this time, but want to install additional software from either internal or external CD.

for the external drive....linux recognizes usb devices as scsi devices...(i dont really know why really) and so u should make sure u have the scsi stuff of ure kernel installed...and when u connect ure usb drive, type

mount

and ull get the usb drive (usbfs)on /dev/procs or some thing similar...

if the usb rw is the only drive in the machine...then u probably will have it as 'scd0' or 'scd1' or something....i hink it can even be 'sda' or 'sdb'...i dunno ...u have to keep experimenting

anyway what u have to do is create a mount point ...i.e make a directory called 'usb'(or whatever u want in /mnt)


then type

mount /dev/scd0 /mnt/usb

keep trying different combos/....do a google on usb file systems...

Thanks! After I found that the usb module is still in, all I did was add to /etc/fstab

/dev/usbdevfs /mnt/cdrw udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,rw 0 0

similar to what was already in for the internal. When I clicked on User Mount Tool, only /dev/cdrom was there. I clicked on it, and the external cdrw started working. I don't understand why it works under cdrom and doesn't even show cdrw, but at least I can load Kylix now and won't worry about why until I find out something about the internal cdrom.