Recently installed Suse Linux 10 open source version. After trying to boot for 2 days from disk found that ISO files had to be burnt. Once this was done install on HP Visualize with dual Pentium 3's was flawless. After configuration of basic system, I attached a USB Zip drive. It was not detected hot. Re-booted machine and still did not detect. Checked in proc/bus/usb file and there are no entries. The system detects the USB root hardware but nothing that is attached to the USB port. Same problem with my scanner. It is as if the port is dead. Everything else seems to work ok, but havn't tested a lot of the multimedia stuff. Eventually got Samba to work after a bit of a struggle.

type this in a console as root and see what you get: (with your USB Zip drive plugged in and a disk inserted)

root@whatever# fdisk -l

if you see your zip disk there then the USB port is working, you just need to add a line to your /etc/fstab file. post the output of fdisk -l and we will try to help!