is there any command or dir i can look in that tells me how the kernal assigned my hardware devices if i need to edit them?

devices are assigned on boot. higher level configuration for each type of device is done within their own configuration files.

what are you actually thinking about trying to edit? want to say your hard drive is actually a tv card?

There's plenty of information in /proc to be found. These are only really useful to see how the computer is behaving, not to make any setting changes (settings can usually be changed elsewhere).

cd /proc

cat modules
cat partitions
cat interrupts
cat ioports
cat mounts
cat pci

#(though lspci and lsmod are preferred over reading through pci and modules)

Look around and see if the information you need is in there. Other information on how hardware is auto detected (by hotplug) is sometimes available under /sys, though I do not yet understand how to interpret most of it.

i bought a new cd burner cuz my old one is on the fritz so i will need to edit stuff to get the new one working i assume.

would i have to change something in fstab to do so? Would i nee to know how the kernal assigns the old cd burner? I know that my dvd rom is hdc but not sure which my cd burner is.

you would change nothing at all. a straight physical swap is all that's needed. just make sure the IDE jumpers are set the same, and you'll never know the difference... an IDE CDRW drive is a 99% generic device. only a few subtlties might ever crop u pusing the buffering protection methods etc.. even then i bet you'l never tell the difference.

the old one is cd burner, the new one is a combo burner dvd drive? would ii still not need to make any changes? And if i had to/wanted to where would i do that? fstab?

i read that ATAPI devices should be compatible with linux. This is ATAPI (EIDE) drive. Would that present a problem? I apologize, im a relative noob to Linux and don't have much experience with hardware on any OS If it makes any difference i am running Fedora Core 2 (soon 3)

well if you did want to change somethign then yes, /etc/fstab would be it.. but there is nothign to change. i assure you...

I second for acid_kewpie. Put it in and see if it works. If you have any problems, then worry (and post back).

Hardware is auto detected every time the computer is turned on. There are some places where driver settings and such are kept, but I don't think there are any special settings needed for CD or DVD drives.

i put it in and now when i go to boot it won't load fedora. it says hdc: not ready for command. Last i knew hdc was my dvd rom drive. I have my bios set to boot from cd first but a live cd or install for another distro won't work. I can only interact with the computer through grub and the bios as far as i know. I've tried opeing up the box and making sure teh wires were fully connected. I've tried having the bios detect the drive. I think my only option is a linux distro on floppy that i can use to mess around with settings. I don't care about losing any of the data cuz i was going to install fedora core 3 or mandrake on there anyways, and i wanted to mess around with the partition sizes too. ANy help would be appreciated cuz until i get my box up and running im stuck using windows.

If the BIOS (CMOS setup) doesn't see the drive, then it is possible, but highly unlikely that the drive is connected properly. I'd check the jumpers on the back of the drive (as acid_kewpie referred to). (If BIOS does see the drive, then ignore this paragraph. It just sounds like it doesn't from you post.)

I find it very odd that changing the drive would prevent linux from booting. At what point does the boot up stop? The exact error, and maybe a line or two above it, would help. Do you have scsi drives (unlikely)? Does linux start to boot at all, or do you think the error is being displayed by GRUB (usually several lines of text on an otherwise black screen before it freezes)?

Without knowing more symptoms, I can only guess. You could disconnect the drive (or even put the other back in temporarily) and check your /boot/grub/menu.lst file (aka /boot/grub/grub.conf) and see if there are any references to hdc or hd2.

i switched the drive jumpers (dvd rom was on cable select and new one was on master. changed dvd to slave) Prior to changing drives i tried installing Gaim. Afterwards i experienced problems. From the commandline i uninstalled Gaim and got rid of the dirs and rebooted then it worked.