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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