plain english please

[extremenewbie]

well i resolved the cdrom recognition problem.
i had an old sony ide from a really old box. swapped them out, it sees them,but unfortunately i didn't install with this so now i think i have to recompile the kernal, right? will i was just at a howto site- www.ibiblio.org/linux. (http://www.ibiblio.org/linux.) and even though it WAS english i sure looked like a foriegn language to me. Honestly would it be easier to just reinstall all of it and then just /mnt the cd-rom?
thanks

[Evil Jeff]

Can you not mount your cdrom? Try "mount /dev/cdrom /somedirectory" and see if it can read it. If you are using debian, you need to specify that you want to be able to read the rom system, and you should also choose some other file systems used on cdroms. But most distros try to auto-detect new hardware or updated hardware. If it can see your cdrom and you have the ability to read cds, you should be able to mount a volume on your hd. Give it a shot.

Evil Jeff
www.hellincorporated.com (http://www.hellincorporated.com)

[Beowulf_Ghost]

Some older storage devices had proprietary interfaces. If this is a _really_ old CD-ROM (before ATAPI) then this could be a problem. If it's a 4x or above, it probably isn't.

Goto http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CDROM-HOWTO-3.html

This is a list af supported CD-ROM's, and how to get them working. I had to use a similar method (SCSI emulation) to get mty Zip drive working.

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Silence is Foo!
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Harry Browne for President

http://www.lp.org

[extremenewbie]

yes after installing the old sony (not proprietary) harddrake is able to recognize it but i have been unable to mount it. the motherboard is old and doesn't support a secondary ide or atleast it doesn't work from there, however it is not labled as the primary is. it is set up on the hd ribbon the same as it was out of the other box.
when i try to mount it i get a message along the lines of module not found in /ect/???

the sony is on the list of supported devices, but then so was the proprietary panasonic.

[Phreakee]

I know that for some of the older non standard CD-ROMs you needed to recompile the kernel to add support for them. They are still on the "supported hardware" lists b/c they are supported, just not with the same drivers as an ATAPI or SCSI drive.

[extremenewbie]

ok now seeing that i only have 1 days active experience(several failed attepts at install) can some body walk me through the compile process, assuming i am able to find the correct drivers. i found the listing on the site i mentioned above it even tells you wich drivers to get but not where to get them.

ps..raised on windows byt not happy at all with it, but i know nothing about linux commands or anything. hell i feel like i accomplished something whe i get it to change or list directories.
lol

[Phreakee]

there is an article at maximum linux's web site (a great magazine!!)
http://www.maximumlinux.com/howtos/howto/2000_03_01/kernel_1.html

Since you are a newbie I would suggest checking out a copy of maximum linux and thumbing through their web site, they have a lot of good info and it is all in "English" and easy to understand.

Well at least that is my 2 cents.