Linux device drivers, out of necessity, read the wires. Try a dell system some time, I have found unused circuitry on many boards.

That being said, it is quite likey that knoppix sees the cd drive, yet, because the bios is not assigning resources for it, it is unavailable.

Please see the comment in my first post, "First of all I would make certain that the jumpers and cabling are correct and that the device has _no_ recognition issues before going any further".