DVD/CD-RW dissapeared HELP!

[Dikkiedik]

I installed gentoo using the latest gentoo-dev-sources kernel. And after a few reboots, my cd station dissapeared on me. I shut down my laptop, put the power back on and ussualy it's there again but this time it just stayed away. So I flashed my bios, thinking something was wrong with it, because I couldn't find the cd station even when I searched after it in the bios. That didn't help. A friend told me to disconnect the IDE cable, which I did, then turn my laptop back on, turn it off again, reconnect the IDE cable and turn on my laptop. And it worked!! It had something to do with legacy hardware support. I reconfigured my kernel without any legacy support on (as far as I know anyway) and today the same thing happend again! but the trick with disconnecting and reconnecting the IDE cable didn't work. So it's gone now. It can still open and close, and spin up cd's but that's it. The system doesn't recognise it as an ATAPI device.

I'm totaly lost on this one. I know the damn thing is still working but I don't know how to get it back.

My machine is a Acer Aspire 1700 laptop and the cd drive is a DVD/CD-RW station.

Can anybody tell me more about this, or about legacy hardware support.
Can anybody help? I really need it.

[NeddySeagoon]

Dikkiedik,

Your CD should not come and go due to software. If the BIOS can't see the drive its a hardware problem. If the machine is under warranty, return it to Acer.
Acers support of Liunx is close to that of Microsofts.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.