this post is meant for emdee. thxs for ur reply. I've tried ricken.... suggestion( pls see my posts)
the cat and ls -al cmds yielded good info. i have configured the sound and it works my problem remains mount of the cd rom. i've made some changes in the /etc/fstab file to no avail and now i wonder if that's even setup properly, do u have a template of it? or urs that works, the only changes i made were to the cdrom lines. whenever i mount /mnt/cdrom i get the message "no medium found". i am still w/o access to the cd rom. thxs for any suggestions, but since i conf. the sound card and it works i don't think that's the problem. i am using a kds laptop, piii.