I havent burned cds on linux for ages now. Today I was trying to make one. It seems you no longer needs scsi emulation on 2.6 kernels. I had some trouble with cdrecord on my sarge box at home. cdrecord -scanbus said.
cdrecord: Warning: Running on Linux-2.6.12.3
cdrecord: There are unsettled issues with Linux-2.5 and newer.
I googled a bit and found out the reason in the following link.
http://programming.linux.com/article.pl?sid=03/12/09/1341236&mode=thread&tid=40&tid=91
I used the fiollowing commands on my debian sarge box running 2.6.12
a) scanbus
cdrecord -scanbus dev=/dev/hdb
b) blank
cdrecord -V dev=/dev/hdb blank=all
c) burn
cdrecord -V dev=/dev/hdb debian.iso
( -VV flooded my screen )
you can try out -eject and speed=48
cdrecord manual has some good example on burning different formats. (I am yet to try making a VCD)