The devices themselves are set up it looks like OK. /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/cd is set up with permissions of 660, which is probably fine, however the SHORTCUT to this, which is what cdrecord uses, has permissions of 555 - read and execute, but no write!
Anyway, either the permissions gotta get fixed, or the programs have to run as root. Don't know if it makes any difference, but the drive is a pcmcia ide cd-rw drive. I have added two lines to the script that starts pcmcia card ide drives to unload and reload the ide-scsi driver, so that the drive is recognised as ide-scsi, and also moved the startup for pcmcia before hardrake and kudsu. Would it make sense to have pcmcia start earlier as the norm, so that hardware detection would be able to see attached pcmcia hardware? V.