Made some progress - on DIR 655 chose WEP and Wireless G (since I done have any N adapters). After that the status screen on DIR 655 shows the SSID broadcasting at 20 Mhz on Channel 1. However, now I go to the laptop to try and connect I dont this SSID. BTW, I have WPS disabled.
Hopefully this is more information than what I had previously posted to help me solve this issue.
Thanks