It seems like you've gotten a lot of good advice, so I'll try
not to duplicate it, but I've got a few comments, and I may be 
able to make a couple of things clearer... 

>To see if they have a real dns server or not you can run
>winipcfg on a win95/98 box.  If they have one you will find the
>listing there. On windows 2000 you can run ipconfig /all from a
>command prompt to get the same info. If there is one listed (An
>internal one that is) you can put that in /etc/resolv.conf. 

This is important.  Run these commands to find out how the WINS
boxes are doing their name resolution.  Try to do the same thing
as they are, so you'll pick up any changes made to the network.
If they're using WINS, you use WINS, likewise DNS.  Point to the
same servers for these services.  If they are DHCP clients, best
bet is you be one, too, and you'll pick up the correct settings. 

> You can ping them, but you'll have to put them in your
> /etc/hosts file
> like this:

> 172.16.0.10     windowsbox

You can do this, but better to use WINS.  Then as machines
change, you'll stay with the flow.

> Okay I was assuming that the two problems were related. 

DNS and WINS are similar, but otherwise not really related.  WINS
is specific to MS, and resolves "NetBIOS" names to IP addresses.
The Win boxes will just call their NetBIOS names the "Computer
name".  They'll also have a "Host" name (listed in the DNS tab of
the configuration), and USUALLY these will match the NetBIOS
name. DNS resolves between IP addresses and host names, WINS
resolves between IP addresses and NetBIOS names. 

>Does that mean that I won't *ever* be able to ping the windows
>boxes since they are using the WINS server to do name
>resolution?

By now I think you understand this not to be true.  The only
question is HOW you will resolve their names.  So, for example,
You can set up a mapping of NetBIOS names to IP addresses on your
local machine (/etc/hosts), or you can use WINS.  The latter
method means you won't have to manually keep your mappings up to
date.

>I really do have a nameserver set up in /etc/resolv.conf but it
>may be wrong. no one here seems to know since dhcp takes care of
>all of that for them. 

Resolv.conf is where you'll indicate your DNS servers.  But
you'll probably need to tell you box where the WINS server is,
too.  That's in smb.conf:

	wins support = No
	wins server = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Again, match up to the other machines.
And get DHCP to do what work it can for you!

Details on samba and networking with Windows machines at:
http://us4.samba.org/samba/docs/Samba-HOWTO-Collection.html
Details on being a DHCP client can be found at:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/DHCP/index.html

Hope this helps...



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