hi thanks for the reply
no offense taken, I tried to set the nic card first then rebooted per the manual instructions, then tried setting the ip via dhcp, but always returns 0.0.0.0
I got fed up messing with it and installed openfiler. that is up and running, but still trying to figure out how that works.
As for the freenas box, I tried the onboard nic, as well as added a pci nic and nada.
I will try the livcd on another existing comp. any other insight would be awesome. I am actually thinking installing ubuntu and runny fuppes and samba might be easier.