[G4] External drive and EMac/Jaguar

[Ron]

My friend (def. Not a newbie) just got a new E Mac running 10.2.2. He can't
get it to mount or even see his external hard drive or CD-RW no matter what
combination of plugging in or turning them on, etc. The disk utility doesn't
even see them to mount them. The cables are fine and they work on another
Mac running os 10. Also his DV camera mounts and works fine in iMovie. I
know nothing about X so I can't help him but it seems that there is a driver
problem to me. 

Any suggestions before taking it to the shop??
TIA