networking woes

[Killerpenguins]

I have an ECS desknote 1.6 512mb ram and 40 gig hd.  I had a 10 gig on 
it with Mandrake 8.2 and it worked fine as my primary internet 
machine/email desktop. I upgraded the hard drive because now I am 
trying to use it more as a laptop. I would prefer not to just use 
Windows 98 on it, since I have booted into Win since December only 
about 5 times to watch a dvd, now I have a dvd player.
My problem is this,  my network (including my Windows gaming machine) 
is named one thing with dhcp,  my parents network is named another 
thing with Windows and dhcp, my brothers and brother in laws are 
entirely fixed ip's with yet two more workgroup names.  There are two 
ranges of private ip address (196.168.123.xxx and 192.168.1.xxx) and in 
one case two subnet masks (two nat devices one wired and one wireless).
I have currently installed RH 8 and tried Mandrake 9.1 (locks up on 
reboot at modprobe) I would prefer Mandrake as I still am too much of a 
newbie(ie. I am the only family member using Linux and I work 7 days a 
week making it hard to attend the meetings).
I am trying to figure out if this can be done and bring the desknote to 
the next installfest (please recommend most common os among regular 
attenders) to get help with it.
I will probably just leave RH on till then, since I have Linux for a 
while now I am getting to the point where I am getting interested in 
the guts and how to configure it.

Thanks
Randal