Always remember, that you can still use corrupt CD-ROMs as coasters. :-)
Please check first, that the writer works under the software it is shipped with (=under another operating system). Concretely:
If "it doesn't even work" with the accompanied software you have a hardware conflict or defective hardware. If it works and you use loadlin to boot Linux, then that is your problem. Loadlin makes a warm-boot with most of the hardware already initialized and that can confuse the Linux kernel.
Under Linux, some versions of the C-library are incompatible (buggy), so that an application linked against one version will not work with another. An example for an error triggered by pre-compiled binaries is the following:
[root@Blue /dev]# cdrecord -eject dev=0,6,0
cdrecord: No such file or directory. No read access for 'dev=0,6,0'.
Try to use Linux. Installation and configuration of SCSI drivers for DOS is the hell. Linux is too complicated? Ha!
Most likely those errors are caused by
Under various circumstances SCSI devices dis- and reconnect themselves (electronically) from the SCSI bus. If this feature is not available (check controller and kernel parameters) some writers run into trouble during burning or fixating the CD-R.
Especially the NCR 53c7,8xx SCSI driver has the feature disabled by default, so you might want to check it first:
NCR53c7,8xx SCSI support [N/y/m/?] y
always negotiate synchronous transfers [N/y/?] (NEW) n
allow FAST-SCSI [10MHz] [N/y/?] (NEW) y
allow DISCONNECT [N/y/?] (NEW) y