This works "out of the box" for reading CDs.
For writing CDR/CDRW media, I tried Koncd, which correctly identified the CDROM drive but would not write anything, generating an "Error 2 could not write to file " ' "".
I have never got Koncd to work before in previous hardware/software configurations (SCSI or ATAPI/IDE), so this was no surprise. Reverted to my old favourite, XCDroast, added localhost to access list
$ xhost +localhost
and wrote CDs with no problems.
The DVD function requires a symbolic link before any application will recognise it. As root, create a link as follows:
$ ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd
There are various applications for playing DVDs but most seem to support only unencrypted formats. A version of XINE with integrated CSS decryption has been packaged by Matthias Saou:
You will need (for RH7.3):
1. xine-0.9.12-fr1.i386.rpm
2. xine-libs-0.9.12-fr1.i386.rpm
and
3. aalib-1.2-3.i386.rpm - this is available from
http://www.dlhoffman.com/publiclibrary/RPM/freshmeat/aalib/aalib-1.2-3.i386.html
Uninstall the existing XINE package as provided with RH7.3 and install the 3 packages listed above. Run xine and check that your DVD is playable (for CSS-encrypted disks, select the xine control panel button labelled "d4d").
Two final "tweaks":
1. To direct the sound output to the KDE aRTs sound server, start xine as follows:
$ xine -A arts
The sound may not work otherwise.
2. To enable DMA access for the DVD drive (prevents video frame loss and gaps in the sound), the following command is required:
$ /sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdc &> /dev/null
If this works for you, the line can be added to /etc/sysconfig/harddisks so that it runs each time the computer boots.