Done some more... the cable works fine via the laptop, the router works fine also...
I have also tried a PCI wifi card in the pc...
and a USB wifi dongle, both give the dodgy 169.254.xx.xx address...
What would you suggest?
this thread is about the same thing...
http://shoutbox.menthix.net/showthread.php?tid=76511&pid=840739
ethernet
wifi pci
wifi usb
None work