Can't even get started with Solaris!

I downloaded all Solaris 10 1/06 (X86) files (DVD), combined them, made and
made a bootable DVD. I also made a DVD of the companion disc.

Solaris installs fine, but once it is up and running:

- The DVD (IDE) drive doesn't work, even though it is the SAME drive it
intalled with! The computer has four CD/DVD drives. Two IDE (DVD and
DVD-RW) and two SCSI (CD and CD-RW). The two DVD drives are both IDE
masters: one on the primary channel and the other on secondary. (The HDD's
are SCSI.) None of them work even though the documentation says that CD and
DVD drives should "automount" when discs are put in. It says that the mount
point is "/cdrom", but that directory doesn't even exist.

- No USB support? I have an external 250GB drive, mounted inside a USB2
enclosure. If I could talk to it, at least I could get at software I
downloaded before hand to start building Solaris up.

- Network NIC doesn't work, so can't get to the internet. The computer has
an Atheros-based wireless card and also a Linksys NC100 NIC. I don't
expect the wireless card to work right away. (It was a pain to get working
in Linux, had to use ndiswrapper.) But, the NIC? The NC100 is pretty
generic and standard card that has been around forever.

I'd really like to start using Solaris as it does look like a nice clean OS,
but being at a complete chicken and egg (can't use any devices or get on the
internet), it is pretty much just reduced to nothing except a way to run
OpenOffice, which I can do under Linux anyway. It did find my video card
with no problem and both CDE and the Sun'd java gnome look great. I just
don't have any direction to go from here at all.

TIA...


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