My cdrom drive shows up under /dev/cdrom and /msnt/cdrom. it mounts fine and I have no issues reading from it. However, whenever I try using a cdburning front end, such as Xcdroast or arson, it doesn't list it as a source cdrom drive, only the cd-rw drive. Why?

I have had a similar post on justlinux for 10 days now... no answer. Anyone here wanna help a community member?

It's because scsi emulation is enabled for the CDRW, but not the CDrom. If you are using lilo, open and edit lilo.conf You have a line with "hdc=ide-scsi" in it, it may say hdd or hdb, depending on where the writer is on the ide bus. Primary master=hda, primary slave=hdb etc. I'm assuming it's sec master. Add a single space, and then hdx=ide-scsi where hdx is the correct string for your CDrom. My lilo.conf line looks like this -
append="quiet devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi"

Save the file, and then as root, in a console type lilo to enable the changes. After rebooting, open a aconsole, as root, and type cdrecord -scanbus You should see both drives listed, and your cd burning apps will also be able to see them.