It could also be that time of the CD-ROM's life when it has to go and meet it's maker...It's a good possibility as you say it also occurs in NT. I think the likelyhood of the BIOS settings screwing it up are minimal (I've found linux to be very robust when it comes to using CD-ROM drives).
Cheers Dave On Wed, Mar 03, 1999 at 22:19 -0000, Sarah & Iain wrote: > I am running Debian 2.0 and am expriencing problems with my CDROM. Previously > all was going well and I could add packages via the 2.0 CD, however recently > my CD player has been giving problems (when I power up the active light is > flashing constantly and never stops). > When I boot into debian the kernel finds that the device is not ready with > error (I've appended the dmesg report below) > hdb: no response (status = 0x90) > > Is there any way in which I can manually reset the CD drive from the prompt, > because dselect tells me that hdb is not a valid block device. > > I have a Samsung CDROM which is normally on /dev/hdb - the active light > flashes from the moment I power on - could this be a problem with the BIOS > settings? I unfortunately lost (i.e. wasn't clever enough to write down) the > BIOS settings I had when the CD was working. I believe this may be the case > since I am now having similar problems under Windows NT. > > Many thanks, > > Dr Iain Scott, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- Dave Swegen | Debian 2.0 on Linux i386 2.2.1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | PGP key available on request <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Linux: The Choice of a GNU Generation ----------------------------------------------------------------------