I have attempted to solve this issue before although on other distros.
Currently I have a Lenovo IdeaPad Y710 and the CD-ROM is missing after the install of Mint Maya.
I see there are a few people reporting this issue:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/cd-dvd-rom-not-working-in-ubuntu-8-04-on-lenovo-ideapad-y710-686982/page2.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=926131
I too have no report of a cdrom in /dev
However a trending solution is to edit either the grub.cof file or the menus.list file and edit the line where it says Kernel…….. put acpi=off
Where can I find these files in MInt Maya???
PS. I tried fixing this before with a lot of technical out put if your would like to refer:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/cd-rom-missing-so-strange-929440/
