Hmm..It was working fine until I tried to resolve an unrelated network printing issue. Now k3b burns data and music cd's the same as always, though now it fails to burn in DAO mode..bin/cue or iso. It seems to have lost a driver? I can't find the one mentioned in the log listed in /cdrdao/drivers.. I'll be honest and admit I don't know much about drivers for burning.
Either that or something has changed the permissions on my ide drives. Totally confused because all the info about burning seems to be years old and about manually changing drive types (scsi/ide) by compiling the kernel.. It was working before, why not now?..

Any ideas?. Here is a list of the k3b fail log. It says to report this as a bug.. I just don't understand what has changed. It's probably something simple I'm missing here....
Devices
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_NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A 1.05 (/dev/hdd, ) at /media/cdrom1 [CD-R; CD-RW; CD-ROM; DVD-ROM; DVD-R; DVD-RW; DVD+R; DVD+RW] [DVD-ROM; DVD-R Sequential; DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite; DVD-RW Sequential; DVD+RW; DVD+R; DVD+R Double Layer; CD-ROM; CD-R; CD-RW] [SAO; TAO; RAW; RAW/R96R]
CD-RW CDR-7S52 QSGE (/dev/hdc, ) at /media/cdrom0 [CD-R; CD-RW; CD-ROM] [CD-ROM; CD-R; CD-RW] [SAO; TAO; RAW; SAO/R16; RAW/R96P; RAW/R96R]

System
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K3b Version: 0.11.20
KDE Version: 3.3.2
QT Version: 3.3.4
Kernel: 2.4.27-2-386

cdrdao
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Cdrdao version 1.1.9 - (C) Andreas Mueller <andreas@daneb.de>
SCSI interface library - (C) Joerg Schilling
Paranoia DAE library - (C) Monty
Check http://cdrdao.sourceforge.net/drives.html#dt for current driver tables.
Using libscg version 'schily-0.8'
ATAPI:/dev/hdc: CD-RW CDR-7S52 Rev: QSGE
Using driver: Generic SCSI-3/MMC - Version 2.0 (options 0x0010)
Burning entire 74 mins disc.
Starting write ERROR: Cannot retrieve drive capabilities mode page.
at speed 0...
Process can be aborted with QUIT signal (usually CTRL-\).
ERROR: Cannot retrieve write parameters mode page.
ERROR: Cannot setup write parameters for session-at-once mode.
ERROR: Please try to use the 'generic-mmc-raw' driver.
ERROR: Writing failed.

cdrdao comand:
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/usr/bin/cdrdao write --device ATAPI:/dev/hdc --driver generic-mmc:0x00000010 --speed 16 -n -v 2 --force --eject --remote 20 /tmp/kde-janrocks/k3bT1P9Ha.tmp.cue

edit I just remembered I did install Varsha (a java based dvd authoring tool) which tried to access and change settings of my drives. I didn't let it change anything, but that doesn't mean it hasn't. What I'm thinking of doing seeing that reinstalling k3b hasn't changed matters is to remove all burning apps and tools and starting again from scratch.