Philips jackrabbit USB drive

[Lonnie Freeman]

Hi,
I recently set up a P3, 733 mghz, Intel motherboard with FC3, all updates complete.  Newest kernel.
This is a kind of "test and tinker" computer, 2 hard disks, 1 win98 (master) and 1 FC3 (slave).  FC3 installed without a hitch, runs great, no problems.  Until I plug in the Philips USB cd recorder.  
It shows up in /etc/fstab as /dev/scd0, on boot as 6x/6x cd recorder, and in the hardware browser as the Philips CD recorder (I forget the exact phrasing, but it is correct).  The device works correctly under windows.  I know usb is working because a 512 meg usb thumb drive works correctly on either usb port, under both linux and windows.  The drive is OK, and runs beautifully under Redhat 9.0 on another computer.
So far, so good.
With the Philips drive plugged in and the computer rebooted, gnome will complete boot VERY SLOW!  Meaning the boot goes correctly until the gnome desktop screen, then the screen will take several minutes to load.  The task bar will work with a grey desktop screen.  Sometimes (about 1 time out of 3) the drive will work and automount.  Most times it will not even automount.  When it mounts it will only read the disk that is in the drive, i.e. when that disk is ejected the drive can not be remounted and read another disk without a reboot.  When loading KDE instead of Gnome the splash screen comes up quickly but konquerer will open and sit there for several minutes trying to read the drive, giving me the same results as Gnome.  The drive cannot be mounted through the console.  I would probably be able to mount from console IF it is running in GUI but I haven't tried (if it worked in GUI I didn't need to!).
Browsing through the net brought no joy...
The drive seems to be loading correctly but is still not working.  
Any ideas?  What more information is needed for troubleshooting?

Thanks guys,
Lonnie