CD-reader on SONY VAIO SR27K

[blair.kelly@att.net]

I have Debian 3.0 on a SONY VAIO PCG-SR27K.
I am unable to get the Sony CD reader (PCGA-CD51/A)
that attaches via the PCMCIA slot to work under
Debian.

Looking at the suggestions for related architectures
on www.linux-laptop.net, it is suggested that
/cdrom is improperly linked to /dev/hde and should
be linked to /dev/hdc. So I have done

    rm /dev/cdrom
    ln -s /dev/hdc  /dev/cdrom

My /etc/fstab has the following entry

/dev/cdrom   /cdrom  iso9660   defaults,ro,user,noauto   0   0

Yet when I do 'mount /cdrom' (when the CD-reader is
plugged in and a CD is in the CD-reader) all I get is

mount: /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device

What else should I look at?  Any suggestions gratefully
accepted.

Blair Kelly