fedora8+wifi+dhcp not working suddenly

[hopper]

my configuration is as follows
-2wire at&t home gateway
-p1 with redhat 7.2 runing dhcpd
-linksys WRT54G acting as wireless access point

up until now the 2wire gateway also acted as the dhcp server but the last thing i did was run yum update on the fedora 8 box and canceled it before it finished downloading the headers
now the fedora 8 box refuses to take an address from dhcp
from either the 2wire gateway or the dhcp server (only one on at a time of cours)
even when i statically assign it an ip it wont ping out
it will ping itself however and iwconfig shows detects the router's ssid and mac address.. so i know the antenna works
not to mention it seems to work in windows and HAD worked prior t
and my laptop's wifi works on the same network with fedora 6

any ideas?