No luck, just made an identical entry in route -n.
When you say no dropped packets do and it's communicating, do you mean communicating with the switch, xp box, or the eth0 is communicating with linux..? Just curious.

I mean the XP box. It is the only other destination on the network with an IP at the moment. I don't understand why a ping doesn't result in a response, as eth0 is broadcasting packets to the network and none have been dropped en route. Therefore, they must be recieved. The XP box should be able to ping the Linux box if this is so.

C:\Documents and Settings\floods>ping 192.168.0.2

Pinging 192.168.0.2 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.2:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)

I'm now at a loss. Sounds like a firewall issue, really. Do you have one enabled on either box when you are doing the ping?

sorry i had to step out last night(wife was hounding me about dinner or something, ha). i finished reading up the posts here, i agree w/you about the firewall issue, however, i was thinking, just a dumb ? does the windows machine, or gateway, actually have 2 nics, or 2 connections?in other words, a connection to the internet, and then the lan. just throwing out ideas.

I have NIS disabled on the XP host, and I'm not sure if I do or not really on the slack machine. How would I tell?

The XP machine doesn't have two NICs, though it does have multiple net connections.
I have direcway, and I have a local area network, if that's what you're asking. The direcway connection being the one using ICS.
I also have another internet account using bellsouth, but it's not dialed up when I'm doing any of this, nor is it shared.

so the xp gateway machine has 1 nic, connected to the switch? i'm trying to get your topology in my head.

iptables -F should flush any firewall rules existing on the slack machine. to add, this is usually done w/2 connections...i.e one nic to some type of modem, and another nic to the hub/switch, or, a modem dialing up, and, a nic connected to the hub/switch. that's the reason i'm trying to see the topology of your network.

Alright, I'll lay my network out, from the dish outside to the slack machine.. lol

There's a satellite outside, that runs a coaxial cable to the modem. The modem is then connected to the XP host with a USB cable, and I get online with software (why I can't use slack as host.) I then have a cable going from the XP host to a switch, and a cable from the switch to a NIC in the slack machine.

Under the XP hosts network connections, I have two 1394 connections (my firewire), my Direcway Internet connection, a Local Area Connection, and my Bellsouth dial-up account.
I have DWay using ICS.
Under the Local Area Connections, the properties are..

Should the Microsoft TCP/IP Version 6 be taken out, because I'm unsure if the slack machine has tcp/ipv6 or not in the kernel. It's um.. 2.4.22 I believe.

not sure about ipv6. under the tcp/ip properties from windows on the local area connection, check the advanced tab, then the options tab and see if there are any ip security rules, or tcp/ip filtering rules.

I don't have any of those checked. No XP firewall/ICS/ICS controlling by users.

i am searching for lans w/usb connections right now, i've pretty well exhausted ideas why it doesn't work. just for grins you could try disabling the tcp/ipv6. other than that, i'm fresh out. can you ping between the boxes w/the internet connection turned off?

Just uninstalled the TCP/IPv6 on the Local Area Network and no luck, may have to try turning it off on the dway connection.. Going to turn off ICS and see now.. and no luck

I may try installing Debain in a little bit if I don't get any further and see if that gets me anywhere.

the only other thing i can think of is to just start from scratch, one step at a time to see if you can pipoint the failure. w/no firewalls, no internet, just the two boxes connected to the switch both w/static 198.xxx.xxx.xxx addresses and see if they can ping each other successfully. if they can, then you can build on it. sorry to be no more help. i really thought we'd have this working by now. ;-(

No, it's no problem.

So far the only way I've learned on these boxes is by having a hard time. I think this is an atual Windows problem before I do a linux one, but I don't know where to pinpoint it.

Guess I'm off to install Debian, though I was really hoping to use slack, simply because I've heard so much about it. It's supposed to be one of the harder ones to use, which is what I want. I'm in this for learning all I can before I'm off to get a Comp. Sci degree.