Linksys WRT54G, bad out of the box?

So today  I bought from radioshack a new wireless router, a Linksys WRT54G (v8). This router is for my church's school office because their last router went out during a lightning storm. I am having a hard time setting this up though.
The church gets Grande internet, a cable service, but the cable modem (a motorola) seems to have trouble connecting with the router; the internet light flashes nonstop and the wan light never comes on. However, if I bypass the router and plug the cable modem directly into one machine, I do get internet, so I assume that's not where the problem is.
So I tried getting into the router itself and having a look at the settings, but I can't reach it. 192.168.1.1 is an unreachable destination, as is 192.168.0.1, and I know that the cables I'm using worked, and I've tried it on two computers now. Is it possible that I got a dysfunctional router?

Linksys is cheap shit in general but it sounds like your lack of knowledge about networking doesn't help either.

Run ipconfig from a command prompt. Your router's IP will be listed next to "GATEWAY" or something like that.

You have connected it backwards. Connect Motorola router to WAN jack, your computer to one of four LAN jacks.

Also WRT54G has no "WAN" light, it's "WLAN", and you are not supposed to use WLAN it before configuring security.

Hang on....  A 4channer goes to church?  WTF?

you might need to try a different IP address to reach it.  192.168.1.100 is worth trying. 

See if your internet provider doesn't force you to register your router's MAC address with them before starting use. If so and you don't want to call them to do it enter the WRT54G config, check the "clone MAC address" box and imput the address of the PC or router that was connected and working before.

https://192.168.1.1
and make sure you plugged the cables in the right place