THATS GOT IT!
OK so just to duplicate ALL the information I found useful here (thanks to elduce for passing on mwax321 suggestion), here is how to get the wifi antenna working & what to do if you screw it up.
1) Select WiFi, scan for networks, add your wifi network with whatever the defaults are (create a new WWAN interface, etc). Just do it the way you would if you had no idea what you were doing.
2) Go back and select the interface for WAN, edit it, and change from STATIC to DHCP CLIENT and click the button directly below it to change the type (not the save or save & apply, but directly next to it to change the type, it might be like "REALLY CHANGE TYPE?", click yes).
3) Unplug the machine, unplug the ethernet cable, plug the electricity back in, wait about 30 seconds.
In the even you screwed up your wifi settings, there is a RESET button on the "card" that the ethernet cable plugs into with white text labeling "S2" (i think, my eyes aren't great). On my particular machine this button did nothing, so i had to manually do a hard reset. On the original version, there may not be a button.
If you completely f~k up your machine and cant get back into it, this is how to reset
https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FUa75bkY.jpg&t=536&c=Ah9HaW4XprLEGAhttps://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FUa75bkY.jpg&t=536&c=Ah9HaW4XprLEGAI can't draw on this image, but i'll describe as best I can using my newbish vocabulary.
Two points of interest:
The big blueish-purpleish chip thing where the wifi antenna wire plugs in. On the left side of that are 11 connections to the green silicon board. Not the one on the very bottom, but the one right above that (2nd one).
To the left and up from that about an inch away there is a red light. Directly left of that are two metal dots. The upper-most dot that's closest to the red light.
You need to bend a paperclip and touch both of these at the same time while the machine is plugged in. Not for very long, half a second is all it takes, the machine (and possibly you) will have a sudden heart attack and go completely dark & silent very abruptly. There should be no risk of electrocution here, but bear in mind I'm just kind of stumbling through to-do lists without a good understanding of what I'm doing here, so no guarantees. After a lengthy (was nearly 10 minutes for me) boot up, the machine will put itself back on 192.168.1.99. I never needed to change my computer to static IP or change my router to 192.168.2.1 for any of this, but apparently the older models default to 192.168.2.99 so you need to move your router from 192.168.2.1 (which will kick all your computers off the wifi).
I now have this noisy stinky filthy (possibly radioactive) machine grinding away in my basement.
I love the Antminer S1, and I really like this company, but I'm also quite happy to have this thing out of my room
edit:
Sorry, I actually took about an hour pawing through the thread & didn't find what I was looking for. Rather than having every possible problem the machine can encounter all in one thread it would make sense to have threads addressing and solving specific problems for better indexing.
Feel free to delete the thread
