dvd drive

Hi, wonder if anyone can help. I've recently installed a copy of Fedora
10 and my dvd drive is refusing to work. At first I took a copy of the
nVidia graphics driver off a dvd no problem. Then I tried to write an
iso to a blank disc. As of then I can't read or write anything to the
drive. I think Gnome is supposed to automatically mount the drive. When
I put a dvd in the drive it recognises it and displays the title of the
dvd but I can't read it, trying to open the drive for exploration
results in no action at all. I'm having the same problem with my floppy
drive, can't read any disks. Any help much appreciated. The dvd writer
is a cheap IDE drive and I wouldn't mind replacing it if it would mean
that the new drive would work.
Thanks
AJJ...

Anthony Jones wrote:
> Hi, wonder if anyone can help. I've recently installed a copy of Fedora
> 10 and my dvd drive is refusing to work. At first I took a copy of the
> nVidia graphics driver off a dvd no problem. Then I tried to write an
> iso to a blank disc. As of then I can't read or write anything to the
> drive. I think Gnome is supposed to automatically mount the drive. When
> I put a dvd in the drive it recognises it and displays the title of the
> dvd but I can't read it, trying to open the drive for exploration
> results in no action at all. I'm having the same problem with my floppy
> drive, can't read any disks. Any help much appreciated. The dvd writer
> is a cheap IDE drive and I wouldn't mind replacing it if it would mean
> that the new drive would work.

It might be the HD controller. I've got a machine (the infamous
Optiplex 320) with a built-in ATI SB600 controller, which Linux has
never liked. It was sort of okay in F5 and F7. In F9 it exhibits the
symptoms you describe: okay for DVD reads; stops working (well,
generates continuous errors) for DVD writes and even subsequent reads.
Power cycling is about the only thing that resets it.

I have no insight for you on the floppy.