I am setting up a printer for a friend. I've built the box using (Gnu/Linux), Slackware-current, Kernel 2.6.7. I have the same setup. Currently the only way I have access to my friends machine is across the Internet via SSH, so I'm unable to manually check cabling at the moment.
On my Slackware box, printing works fine. CUPSd is not installed on either machines, nor do I plan to use it. The setup, LPRng, is not really in question.

The questionable printer, a Xerox M750, does in fact work under MS Windows 98.
When sent cat somefile > /dev/lp0, the printer just starts blinking but nothing is printed. Same results when sent gs -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pcl3 -sOutputFile=\|lpr file.ps
Looking at the dmesg output produces the lp0 on fire error message, which is not useful.

The only thing I've noticed that was not the same as with my machine, which prints fine, is in the dmesg output.

My box, which prints fine, shows:

parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
parport0: Printer, EPSON STYLUS COLOR II
lp0: using parport0 (polling).
lp0: console ready

The Xerox (non-printing printer box) shows:

parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
parport0: irq 7 detected
parport0: Printer, Xerox DocuPrint M750
lp0: using parport0 (polling).


What's missing is the line lp0: console ready. Plus I noticed the additional line
parport0: irq 7 detected.


My question is just, has anyone seen the absence of lp0: console ready line in their setups, and know what may have caused this? Such as a bad cable or incorrect BIOS port setting, or something else possibly?
I'm thinking it might be a bad cable.