I have not used CD-ROM drives in a while, but I believe you need to re-configure your kernel to support them. I am not sure I have the order correctly, but you would 'make menuconfig' select device drivers, select scsi support, then under there you would select CD-ROM support. Then back out to the top level menu and select file systems. From there select cd-rom/dvd file systems and then select iso9660. When you re-build the kernel you should have CD-ROM support.
Steve K.