[Techtalk] HP 9100i CD-Writer on Mandrake 8.2

[perimorph]

Hi Brenda,

> Before I tear my hair out trying to find drivers, is any one successfully
> using an HP 9100i CD burner on Linux?
> 
> If it's known to work, hints on finding the driver would be helpful as well.

I looked, and that model is listed as working fine.  (Most IDE drives
do, since they all use the same standard ATAPI stuff.)  There's no
"driver" for it as you might expect, though.

Because of the way the programs and architecture and all that other
stuff works, only SCSI drives are supported as burners in Linux.  To use
an IDE drive like yours, you have to use a trick called "SCSI
emulation".

In short, it involves building a new kernel if your current one doesn't
have support for SCSI and then adding a line to your kernel options in
LILO or GRUB to turn on SCSI emulation for your drive (/dev/hdc,
perhaps).  It then becomes /dev/scd0 and device 0,0,0 and stuff like
that.

The CD-Writing HOWTO was full of useful information at one time, but I
just looked at it so I could point you to a certain section, and (if my
memory is correct) it's been dumbed-down seriously..  I guess they
expect everyone to use a newer distro that always detects any hardware
the right way any time you add it.  -_-

Still, maybe this gives you the hint you need..  Write back if I can
help more.

--ashleigh