Allright... I posted this to the Redhat-users list but I am getting no reply and I can't find a good answer in other people's threads, so I'm going to try the question out on this forum. Here's the post:

OK-

I have a mystery. I purchased an adaptec 1394 PCI Host bus
adapter and a Sony iLink DVD/CD Rewritable drive (DRX-510UL). The System is Redhat 9 (2.4.20-19.9).
Installed the HBA, rebooted, kudzu detected and configured the
HBA. I shut the system down closed up the case, plugged in and
powered on the iLink drive, started the computer, kudzu did it's
job again and detected the drive and boom DVD burning was
working. I tested burning -R +R CDR... everything worked. took
the drive off for a few days went back later.. still able to
burn.

Then I took the drive off for two weeks. When I tried to use
it again the device wasn't being configured in the /dev
directory. kudzu still detects whether the drive is missing or
not, and claims to configure or unconfigure it. However, it
doesn't link it to /dev/scd0 or anywhere else that I can see.
However, if I plug the drive in through USB... it configures on
the fly. If I install the 1394 HBA card on another system and
plug the drive in.. it works. I just can't get the drive to work
through firewire on the system I originally had it working on.

I've tried moving the card to a different PCI slot, I've changed
the kernel "ide-scsi" arguments, I've run kudzu through a tty and
completely rebooted the machince multiple times with every
possible configuration of hardware and I'm still confused. I
need a second head to help me track down what I've missed. Some
configuration file had to have changed.. but I don't nknow which
one. Anyone have any clues?

Thanks

-Jeff