The most common type of CD-ROM these days is IDE. Most of the drives on the market are IDE/ATAPI. They usually come with their own interface card, but can be connected to a standard EIDE interface if you have available ports. The only real way to tell if your drive is a true IDE/ATAPI compliant drive is to read it's documentation. One sign is a 40 pin connector.
If your IDE drive isn't properly detected by the kernel, you first need to try entering command line parameters. IDE drives are labeled by linux starting with ``hd'' and followed by another letter depending on where they are in the chain. If you have a drive configured as the ``master'' on the first IDE interface, that drive is hda. If you have a drive configured as ``slave'' on the first interface, it would be hdb. A ``master'' on the second interface would be hdc, and so on. So, if your CD-ROM drive isn't properly detected, you may have to force detection using command line parameters. An example of a command line parameter for a ``slave'' CD-ROM on the second interface would be:
LILO boot: linux hdd=cdrom
If you don't know exactly how your drive is configured, it is safe to try the above parameter using a, b, c, and d until it works.