Just posting it here in case anybody else has the same issue in the future.
I had almost given up trying to burn audio cd's on this machine. Nothing would work, building different versions of cdrecord, making the wav files on another machine, different writers...despite the best advice from other ALUG members, all tried and failed.
Then I run YoU today and guess what ? There is a new kernel available
This update fixes several issues: Most important are * kNFSd fix (medium security impact) * CD and DVD writing fixed (mainly affected audio and video, as it only got triggered by unaligned/odd size writes, effect was a large memory leak and defective data on CD)
I didn't even consider the possibility that it was the kernel !!
Anyway downloading the kernel now so (hopefully) that is another one I can tick of my list of new machine issues.
Oh and the reason it worked once, the first time I tried it ? I can only think that this was a bug introduced into the kernel in a version between the one on the SuSE disks I installed from and one that YoU downloaded as soon as I had configured the updater. I had checked that this hadn't happened to cdrecord and friends as it was the only logical explanation for why it had worked once...but like I say didn't consider the kernel.