Not that I'm an expert or anything, but I think I might see your problem.

Your Win2k box is connecting to the outside world and getting a DHCP'd address from the cable company. Say this address is something like 24.28.111.222/255.255.255.0. The Win2k box now believes it lives on a network with other machines in 24.28.111 land.

(I'm assuming here) your Empeg's probably set up with a static IP like 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0 since your cable modem probably won't give you more than one DHCP address. Your Empeg believes it lives in 192.168.1 land.

So when you plug them both into the same hub, they still won't see each other because they believe they live in completely different neighborhoods and in order to see any other addresses, they'd have to go out through the internet instead of looking right next door.

What I think you'd have to do, is set your Win2k box's IP to be say one higher than the Empeg and do without the internet while you're connecting to it. If the Empeg's 192.168.1.1, set the Win2k box to 192.168.1.2, plug them both into the hub with straight through cables and you should be able to connect.

You won't get on the internet until you reset the Win2k box to DHCP and get a new IP from the cable company, but you should be able to connect to the Empeg. It's worth a shot anyway.

Good luck with it.
-Magnus