On Sun, 08 Jan 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.help, in article
, Buzzard wrote:

>Here's a problem i havent been able to
>find an answer to in the online docs:
>
>When I try to mount the cd-rom as such:
>
>mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom -t iso9660

mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

but that assumes that /dev/cdrom is pointing at the location of your CD
drive. On this system, the drive is the master on the second IDE channel
which would be /dev/hdc.

[compton ~]$ ls -l /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Apr 17 2005 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/hdc
[compton ~]$

>my zipslack installation claims that /dev/cdrom
>is not a valid block device.

Your drive may be located elsewhere (hdb is primary slave, hdd is secondary
slave), or even be a different type - like SCSI, or be attached to a
proprietary bus card (like the ancient Sony CDU-31A/CDU-33A), or to a sound
card like the old Soundblasters.

>Do i need to find some DOS drivers for the cdrom and install those at
>the DOS level before running loadlin?

No, DOS drivers don't work with Linux (or any other operating system),
because when Linux (or what-ever) is booted, it replaces DOS as the
operating system.

>(curious about other OS's besides win98)

http://www.distrowatch.com/

There are over three hundred different Linux distributions. A distribution
is the combination of a kernel, and supporting tools and libraries used by
the kernel, and a host of applications.

There are also other UNIX and UNIX clones that will operate on PC hardware,
such as the *BSD families (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), and a commercial UNIX
called Solaris-x86.

The news group you have posted to "comp.os.linux.help" was replaced on
many news servers in 1994, with the newsgroup comp.os.linux.misc. If you
point your news tool at news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, or
news.lists.misc, there is a posting on the 15th of every month listing
the so-called "Big Eight" newsgroups that all news servers should carry.
There are 17 Linux groups listed

[compton ~]$ zgrep linux ../valid.newsgroups.12.15.05.gz | cut -f1 | column
comp.os.linux.advocacy comp.os.linux.misc
comp.os.linux.alpha comp.os.linux.networking
comp.os.linux.announce comp.os.linux.portable
comp.os.linux.answers comp.os.linux.powerpc
comp.os.linux.development.apps comp.os.linux.security
comp.os.linux.development.system comp.os.linux.setup
comp.os.linux.embedded comp.os.linux.x
comp.os.linux.hardware comp.os.linux.xbox
comp.os.linux.m68k
[compton ~]$

Your news server probably also carries a lot of other groups besides the
Big Eight. These probably include the 'alt.os.linux.* hierarchy and many
others. Use your news reader to query the server for a list that it carries
(which might be anywhere from 20 to 120 thousand groups). See also the
'http://groups.google.com server, but be aware that some people filter out
postings from google as "noise".

Old guy

Moe Trin wrote:
> but that assumes that /dev/cdrom is pointing at the location of your CD
> drive. On this system, the drive is the master on the second IDE channel
> which would be /dev/hdc.

Cool, that was it; it'll access the CD-Rom now.
(I didn't know about links)

Now, if I can just get it to use the modem,
(It might be a winmodem, bleah)

And I haven't even tried to print yet...

Thanx for the help; i may be back

--
Buzzard

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.help, in article
, Buzzard wrote:

>Cool, that was it; it'll access the CD-Rom now.
>(I didn't know about links)

http://tldp.org/guides.html User-Guide and System-Admin-Guide

>Now, if I can just get it to use the modem,
>(It might be a winmodem, bleah)

zipslack... I'd have to assume that you will find details in the boot
data in /var/log/messages. Look to see what the kernel's serial driver
sees. You also want to look at the Modem-HOWTO

338050 Jun 17 2005 Modem-HOWTO

which if it's not on your system (possibly in /usr/share/HOWTO/) should
be widely available on the web. A good place to start would be the LDP.
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html.

>And I haven't even tried to print yet...

That can be a joy, but again there is a couple of HOWTOs. Start with

808501 Jul 12 2005 Hardware-HOWTO
258831 Aug 4 2003 Printing-HOWTO

>Thanx for the help; i may be back

As mentioned, you will probably have more help available in the official
comp.os.linux.* groups. Your news server probable also carries
alt.os.linux.slackware, but don't forget that http://groups.google.com/
has the newsgroups archived and searchable. You can often find your answer
in minutes, rather than waiting for your article to trickle around the
world, someone to read it who can help, and then for the delay while that
post trickles back around the world to you.

Old guy