Thanks in advance for any possible help... I am getting really sick of playing
with this.

Ok I tried the direction found at http://www.linuxathome.net/iptables.php and
at this point I am having no joy. 
The pump command command should work when iptables are used right? 

I think I see some sort of error about a name on bootup, but it goes so fast I
can not tell. Where is that log stored in debian?

Here is my situlation

       internet
          |
wirless ISP (192.168.1.1)
         air
my ancient computer with pcmcia 802.11b (192.168.1.9 assighned by dhcp)
           |
my  other computers (?)

At this point I would love to get this working in linux, but I would be only
slightly less happy to get it going as a stopgap through xp...

I just cut and pasted the suggested iptable stuff from the above url.