Problems with Ethernet Adapter

Hi I have installed mandrake 9.1 on an hp e-pc40, however I cant get any
LAN access outside of the loopback or static IP i set, can anyone shed
any light on this??? 

the machine can not ping anyother machine on the LAN, connects into a
netgear ds108 8 port hub 10/100 dual speed 

ip and sm are correct, also tried dhcp it doesnt find the server and
gives itself 169.254.189.132 which I think is similar to the w2k auto
config cant find dhcp server addresses??? 

help I am rapidly going bald!, I am also a Linux newbie! however very
very keen to move from windows, this is proving a first and very
challenging task! 

the driver was auto loaded (eepro100) during the auto 3 cd setup
(automatically) 

examples of other ip's connected to the same hub are 192.168.0.1 or
192.168.0.40 neither can be pinged from the linux box or can ping the
linux box, but work fine with each other, the linux box reports when
pinging for example 192.168.0.1 you get 192.168.0.2 Reports Destination
Host Unreachable 

I can ping loopback and 192.168.0.2 and get reply's 

arp does not return anything just back to the prompt and ifconfig
shows:- 

eth0: Link Encap: Ethernet Hwaddr 00:04:23:02:38:52 
inet addr:192.168.0.2 Bcast 192.168.0.255 Mask 255.255.255.0 
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 
RX Packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 
TX Packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
RX Bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX Bytes:0 (0.0 b) 
Interrupt:5 Base Address:0x9000 

lo Link encap:Local Loopback 
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 
RX Packets:30 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 
TX Packets:30 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
RX Bytes:1994 (1.9 kb) TX Bytes:1994 (1.9 kb) 

route shows 

192.168.0.0 * 255.255.0.0 U O O O eth0 
127.0.0.1 * 255.0.0.0 U O O O lo 
default 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG O O O eth0 

mii-tool shows 

eth0: Negotiated 100BaseTX-HD, link ok 

I can negotiate 10/100 HD link ok 

adapter is i82557 


ethernet adapter has been used before with windows installed 


Heres where I am at so far, its getting more indepth! 

I have pinged 192.168.0.1 from the linux box 192.168.0.2 

pinging 192.168.0.1 
shows 192.168.0.2 reports destination host unreachable 

I ran a network analyser and can see the broadcast from the linux box
asking for the holder of the IP's MAC addr, and the reply with the MAC
addr from .0.1 however this is then not cached in arp on the linux box
and no further activity except another broadcast IP to MAC addr request
and a reply with MAC addr from .0.1 until i ctrl+c on the linux box 

also when I ping .0.2 from .0.1 it sends the broadcast asking for the
MAC Addr of .0.2 and it does not get a reply from .0.2 (linux box)! 

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Paul