Need help w/home network

Hello world!

I'm writing to you from Chile, Southamerica, and need a little help with my tiny home netwk.

Hope you can give me a hand because this thing is breaking my balls.

This is what i have:
1 windows box with XP pro (server)
1 linux box with DSL (box)
1 wrt54gl router with dd-wrt
2 wireless cards, both w/atheros chipsets
1 eth card in the win box

..and this is what i want:
A few days ago my stereo became >/dev/null, so instead of buying a new one i prefered to set up an old pc.. i mean OLD .. let's say.. a p1 100mhz, 64MB ram, 2Gb hdd, as the new remote-controlled home stereo. Basically it would load playlists stored in the windows box, play some fm radio and CD. Before starting to build and configure the infrared-stuff i'd like to finish setting up the network. There's where i need help.

What have i done?

  • set the linux box up (192.168.0.3).
  • connected it via wifi to the router.
  • wired the winbox to the router.
  • configured the router as AP (192.168.0.2).
  • configured the winbox to share files and printers as well as the inet connection (192.168.0.1).. with the xp wizard.
  • configured some shared folders.

Results?

  • linbox sees winbox and can connect to internet.
  • winbox doesn't see linbox neither itself.. nothing shows up in network neighborhood.. net view? nothing.
  • linbox can't see winbox shares.

i've tried many things.. all that you can try in 5 days.. but nothing seems to work.

i've already installed the samba.dsl extension for dsl. It loads the LinNeighborhood window and only the linbox appears, BUT linbox is still getting ping responses from winbox.
Strange as hell isn't it?

Could it be a problem with the winbox? because the basic things are already set: file/printer & inet sharing. The ips are also statically set, the net addr is 192.168.0.0, the mask is 255.255.255.0. linux can see everything, windows can't. Also, trying to configure the net in the winbox, something happened and now i don't have inet in linux, BUT now i can ping the linbox from windows.. just by its IP btw. from linux i can ping by IP and by name.

Everyone keeps saying that it is very easy to do, so i don't understand why it doesn't work! I'm really hating this..

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

Juan Pedro

Nothing obvious comes to mind, but there are many little things which make a difference. Do you have a firewall on the Windows box? If you run a temporary wire between the machines, does that help?