at what point does nothing begin to work ..?

seems that you're running suse.. i'm assuming that it's probably 6.4(?) 
since it says 2.2.13 kernel.. dmesg also says scsi emulation has been
compiled in (impt!) and that the ide-scsi module has sucessfully been
loaded.. (also just to verify, are you running stock kernel or a custom
config?)

have you tried running cdrecord -scanbus.. can you send me that output too

thanks.

-- 
Marc Chung [mchung@asu.edu]
"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately"