samba - Feb 2004 - I can see share, but it won't let me use my pwd (OSX)

(Apologies if this has already gone to the list. I've been trying to 
post via the newsgroup and it appears none of my messages went 
through...so now I'm doing it via the list-serv)

I have samba (2.28) running on a linux server (Mandrake 9.2).

Neither my win2k machine nor my OSX (panther) machine will see the 
share via the network browser. In my OSX machine, I CAN connect if I 
specifically connect to server using the SMB://serverip/ format.

It connects, and sees the shares (but only the ones I made...not the 
default home shares), but refuses my username/pwd.

Here's some pertinent parts of my config file:

[mp3onserver]
comment = mp3s
printable = no
valid users = mp3,homerj
create mode = 0765
writeable = yes
path = /home/mp3/

[testshare]
qeirw liar = mp3, homerj, @mp3, @homerj
path = /home/mp3/

Via webin, I've told Samba to use the Unix usernames and passwords. 
It all appears to be set up correctly via webmin (the system's users 
show up as samba users).

That all led to a connection, but would get invalid usr/pwd error.

So, I made some more adjustments to Samba...namely putting in a 
default directory. Now I get a different error:

the finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "smb" 
could not be read or written. (Error code -36). Google isn't turning 
anything up specific to that other than some mention of rebooting the 
router a few times (which I tried, to no avail).

Any thoughts?

-Darrel