Many thanks for all the contributions to date. I have learnt a great deal
from these and my further researches.
When it comes to LUG I tried to involve myself years ago but sadly I live
too far away in Wiltshire to involve myself with that one which is largely
defunct now I think and the ones nearer to me in Somerset don't seem to be
too active either. In any case I cannot drive now due to my vision
issues. I am now in my early 60s and have vast IT experience including a
former HP-UX systems administrator - quite some years ago now.
Back to the problem. I failed myself here. My initial problem was my
failing eyesight. I tried a few things in Ubuntu including screen readers,
magnifiers etc but with little satisfaction. Then I came across Vinux
distro and thought I would give it a whirl. I downloaded the ISO onto the
machine previously stated and tried to burn it to DVD ROM.
This is when I discovered the 2 drives were not working yet they were fine
in Windows. I have then spent too much time trying to fix this rather than
my original problem!
My 2 drives are physically on top of each other in the tower case. All the
time I was trying the top drive because it was easier for me to feel where
the tray button was. I assumed(wrongly) the lower one was also not
working. From the contributions here and some of my own researches I
discovered the bottom drive was in fact working ( /dev/sr1 I think ) but it
only seemed to be recognised as a CDROM drive. I then woke from the
nightmare and placed the ISO image on a USB stick and then burnt Vinux to a
DVD-R disk on my Ubuntu laptop. Mistake number 2 or 3! When I then booted
it from my Ubuntu laptop I realised it was not a live-dvd and as such could
not access a writeable file system!
The funny thing is I don't expect the distro to be much better than I have
already tried. Sadly, I have found windows much better when it comes to
making changes to mouse pointers/cursors and ones which don't only work
inside a browser. And my android tablet is much better again enabling me
to do voice to text input and using gestures. IMHO Linux has a long way to
go to catch up with android/windows when it comes to assistive features.
I wrote the above on my android tablet, then went to the offending machine
so I could extract some of my findings and paste them. I don't know what I
did yesterday but they both now appear to be working but with some odd
results. If I place a music CD in either drive the system does not
recognise it as an audio CD. Whenever I eject CD or DVD with the right
click eject command it only opens the empty top tray even though its the
bottom tray that holds the medium.
Anyway here are sone techy extracts – thanks again for some tips on how to
obtain and make of them what you will.
using dmesg and grep reveals
[ 1.966370] sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2
cdda tray
[ 1.966438] sr 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
[ 1.963550] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2
cdda tray
[ 1.963624] sr 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
searching /dev for dv reveals nothing but other searches as follows
[ 0.105704] pci 0000:00:01.0: [10de:07cd] type 00 class 0x050000
[ 0.741466] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
[ 0.752080] usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 3.13.0-63-generic ehci_hcd
[ 0.752419] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
[ 0.810053] usb usb2: Manufacturer: Linux 3.13.0-63-generic ohci_hcd
[ 0.810379] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
[ 1.963550] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2
cdda tray
[ 1.963552] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[ 1.966370] sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2
cdda tray
EDITED OUTPUTS FROM OTHER SUGGESTED COMMANDS
/dev/sda1: LABEL="Win_RE" UUID="B8F665CDF6658D06" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="WinVista" UUID="ACE864BFE8648982" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="76577e65-1d5c-4447-8e5a-df0b3df73d0c" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda6: UUID="76bf638d-db15-4c38-a1ec-659b5b5fd5dd" TYPE="swap"
dave-system-product-name
description: Desktop Computer
product: System Product Name ()
vendor: System manufacturer
version: System Version
serial: System Serial Number
width: 32 bits
capabilities: smbios-2.5 dmi-2.5 smp-1.4 smp
configuration: boot=normal chassis=desktop cpus=2
uuid=4000D811-6E99-DB11-81B3-002215755CA2
*-core
description: Motherboard
product: P5N-MX
vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
physical id: 0
version: 1.XX
serial: MS1C87BX1501065
*-firmware
description: BIOS
vendor: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
physical id: 0
version: ASUS P5N-MX ACPI BIOS Revision 0202
date: 12/17/2007
size: 128KiB
capacity: 960KiB
capabilities: pci pnp apm upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect
socketedrom edd int13floppy360 int13floppy1200 int13floppy720
int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer
int10video acpi usb ls120boot zipboot biosbootspecification
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: MCP73 Ethernet
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
physical id: f
bus info: pci@0000:00:0f.0
logical name: eth0
version: a2
serial: 00:22:15:75:5c:a2
capacity: 100Mbit/s
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list ethernet physical mii
10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes
driver=forcedeth driverversion=0.64 latency=0 link=no maxlatency=20
mingnt=1 multicast=yes port=MII
resources: irq:43 memory:efffd000-efffdfff ioport:d800(size=8)
memory:efffc000-efffc0ff memory:efffb000-efffb00f
*-scsi:0
physical id: 2
logical name: scsi2
capabilities: emulated
*-disk
description: ATA Disk
product: SAMSUNG HD502IJ
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 1AA0
serial: S13TJ90Q856720
size: 465GiB (500GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 sectorsize=512 signature=dc73c785
*-volume:0
description: Windows NTFS volume
physical id: 1
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0,1
logical name: /dev/sda1
version: 3.1
serial: fa96e062-bf8a-194f-ade2-eace3d485366
size: 15GiB
capacity: 15GiB
capabilities: primary ntfs initialized
configuration: clustersize=4096 created=2008-09-12 23:17:51
filesystem=ntfs label=Win_RE state=clean
*-volume:1
description: Windows NTFS volume
physical id: 2
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0,2
logical name: /dev/sda2
version: 3.1
serial: 94c0f60a-4270-8f41-9f5b-01654e3e04ec
size: 301GiB
capacity: 301GiB
capabilities: primary bootable ntfs initialized
configuration: clustersize=4096 created=2008-09-12 23:17:48
filesystem=ntfs label=WinVista state=clean
*-volume:2
description: Extended partition
physical id: 3
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0,3
logical name: /dev/sda3
size: 148GiB
capacity: 148GiB
capabilities: primary extended partitioned
partitioned:extended
*-logicalvolume:0
description: Linux filesystem partition
physical id: 5
logical name: /dev/sda5
logical name: /
capacity: 145GiB
configuration: mount.fstype=ext4
mount.options=rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered state=mounted
*-logicalvolume:1
description: Linux swap / Solaris partition
physical id: 6
logical name: /dev/sda6
capacity: 3325MiB
capabilities: nofs
*-scsi:1
physical id: 3
logical name: scsi3
capabilities: emulated
*-cdrom
description: DVD-RAM writer
product: CDDVDW SH-S223F
vendor: TSSTcorp
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@3:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/cdrom
logical name: /dev/sr0
version: SB00
capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram
configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc
*-scsi:2
physical id: 5
logical name: scsi4
capabilities: emulated
*-cdrom
description: DVD-RAM writer
product: CDDVDW SH-S223F
vendor: TSSTcorp
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@4:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sr1
version: SB00
capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram
configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc
*-scsi:3
physical id: 6
bus info: usb@1:8
logical name: scsi6
capabilities: emulated scsi-host
configuration: driver=usb-storage
*-disk:0
description: SCSI Disk
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@6:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sdb
configuration: sectorsize=512
*-disk:1
description: SCSI Disk
physical id: 0.0.1
bus info: scsi@6:0.0.1
logical name: /dev/sdc
configuration: sectorsize=512
*-disk:2
description: SCSI Disk
physical id: 0.0.2
bus info: scsi@6:0.0.2
logical name: /dev/sdd
configuration: sectorsize=512
*-disk:3
description: SCSI Disk
physical id: 0.0.3
bus info: scsi@6:0.0.3
logical name: /dev/sde
configuration: sectorsize=512
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