external firewire HD in installed SLAMPP

[michel...@yahoo.co.uk]

hi there all - three days ago i installed Slampp into my HD for the
first time and realised it is the perfect distro for my needs and being
a linux newbie. In this three days i got a working server, i ruined it
(i guess by something i installed) and re-installed it into a perfect
working base... now i do have some questions...
the first one is regarding an external HD connected through Firewire
(my system is an old sony vaio laptop with no usb2 ports so the
firewire is the only usefull one for network storage)
the problem is that it does not identify the drive (cant see it in
/mnt/ or fstab) - do i need to enable any module in the kernel? and if
so how...
cheers
michel