Hi, Thanks, Anders, for all the help! You helped me move quickly past several problems and enabled me to reach a workable solution more quickly than I would have otherwise. (I start a new job Monday and may not have time to do much on the home computer for awhile.) As I worked on this again, I failed to check /var/log/messages/, but a quick look at it now shows complaints of several modules (none pertinent to this problem) not being found. I ended up compiling all suggested modules into the kernel and now have no problems accessing either the /cdrom or the /zip. (This is OK with me for now as I have >350 MB RAM.) Nevertheless, I may have a more fundamental problem with module loading. From an earlier kernel (with modularized ide-scsi/cdrom access, I have this error message: Dec 13 12:09:14 elfenix insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.2/kernel/drivers/cdrom/cdrom.o: insmod block-major-11 failed (I have had trouble before with modules, too, and resorted to the same non-modular solution.) At any rate, I am going to try to forge ahead now with xcdroast problems (separate post). As for the module loading difficulties, I plan to set those aside for now. I may install (i.e., NOT upgrade to) 8.1 (or is it 8.2 now?) where, if I recall, I don't need ide-sci emulation any more. I am considering this since some time back, I somehow managed to upgrade from 6.1 to 7.1. With the number of things that were changed between 6.1 and 7.1, I can't help but wonder if something might have affected my ability to load modules automatically..... Thanks, Steve __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com