[newbie] Broken? bad wiring? bug?? Help please.

[Vic]

Ok I concede..... how I do to get this dangbusted 
stupid cd recorder to work???

Is there a kludge or a hack??

Please just tell me what to type and I will do it.

I am using mandrake 7.0-2

Is that broken and can't use cdrecorder?

I have a Plextor W8432T and kernel 2.2.14-15mdk
will it work or am I screwed?

I have AMD K6 400 
64Mb sysram
I can mount the drive on /dev/hdd as a cdrom,
but I already have a cdrom so thats no good
as a recorder.