I suggest giving your "rio ethernet" port a static IP address. I have seen in Windows XP that if one ethernet card gets a DHCP address and the other cannot, the one that cannot will get a DHCP address from the "good" ethernet port.

Try giving your your rio ethernet card and the empeg a static IP with the same subnet. You will probably use 192.168.0.1 for your computer and 192.168.0.2 for your empeg. The subnet should be 255.255.255.0 on both. Since you cannot connect to your empeg through ethernet now, you will have to make this change in Emplode with a serial connection.