I didn't have to wait long. With the spare computer online and using 192.168.1.101, I rebooted the downstairs machine and it couldn't get an ip with dhcp broadcast. Got an error message along the lines of "no working leases in persistent directory". 192.168.1.100 was free. Why wouldn't it dish it out? Please help if you have an idea, I have been working of this almost a week (short by linux prob terms, I know) and it's more time than I can give to this anymore.