[plug] newbie device question

[zed]

hi guys..
ive installed and been running red hat 5.2 on a 3 gig ide hard drive.
i have my cd reader and floppy drive ok.
at the boot up sequence it mentions my scsi cd writer  and my ide zip
drive
in my etc/mtab and etc/fstab files  it only mentions normal hard drive
partitions etc..
how do go about setting these up...do i have to recompile the kernel?
even though they are listed at boot up?
any ideas
zed