Hey all,

Im new to linux and am currently getting to grips with it. I've managed to get my soundcard to work. which is an improvement when I first tried linux 3 years ago, I've also managed to get my rather aging and long in the tooth gfx card (ati rad 9600pro) to work . I currently do not have a dvd writer present in the system, but am considering adding one very soon. having just switched over from windows Im still a little alien to how linux works and was wondering how difficult adding such an optical drive will be for me? will I have to do much fiddling around with my new toy or will it be pretty simple? Im sorry if this is a really simple thing but I thought I'd check first before I run into problems later on. If this is something really simple smack me with somthing heavy and blunt

Addin an IDE DVD-RW / CD-RW drive should be a snap. Just power down, plug in its IDE and power cables and power up. The drive should get recognized automatically. Depending on how its jumper is set and on which IDE cable it sits, it can either be marked in the /dev folder as

/dev/hda
/dev/hdb
/dev/hdc
/dev/hdd

For example, on my old system by DVD-ROM drive was dev/hdc (erm - second channel, master device?) and my DVD-RW was /dev/hdd (second channel, slave device)

You can then access a disk that is in the drive by creating a mountpoint:

mkdir /mnt/dvdrom

and then mounting the dev node on this mountpoint:

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/dvdrom

Before ejecting the disk do

umount /dev/hdc

to unmount the disk.

CD/DVD/Hard drives ususally make no problems. Just put it in. LightScribe might not work however.

Also check you have a 80pin ATA cable if you have an older board (the one that came with it is usually 40pin). Fast DVD writers (8x and more) need it, otherwise poor performance/problems is the result.

For other hardware it is better to check if it is supported by Linux and select the one that does.

Thanks a lot guys thats just what I needed. I'll give it a try and post back when I get it to work