got the HP9600 cd writer working with FreeBSD, a breeze. decided on an adaptec 2906 SCSI card to drive it. the only potential problem was that the packaging said mac all over it, though after a quick email to adaptec i discovered the card is the same for either machine, hooray for PCI! also nice to see FreeBSD mentioned on the adaptec support site, all be it listed as a linux distro :( mentioned as much in the support followup email, hoping they come to their senses. mkisofs and cdrecord worked fine off the bat, excellent documentation as usual on the fbsd site.