hardware problems in linux

[nertil1]

i just installed slackware 8.1 but now when i try to use they floppy and cd-rom drives, it won't recognize them. How do i make linux notice them. Is there so sort of tutorial or whatever.
Any comments are appreciated
thanks
-nertil

[GreNME]

Are you mounting them?
For floppy:

# mount /dev/fda0 /mnt/floppy

For CDROM:

# mount /dev/cda0 /mnt/cdrom

[nertil1]

do i do that after i log in as root, at the root prompt

[nertil1]

Also, I tried KDE and now i want to try Gnome, how do i switch to it???