Getting a HP deskjet 400 to talk to my lap top in HP device mangr or cUPS

[abdul.jones]

Old hi-grade notino 3400 laptop with Vector light 6.0 installed. Linux newbie of 3 weeks. Can't get a deskjet 400 to talk with the computer. It grumbles at boot up and log off, but neither cups or hp device manager can detect it. Can't find the parallel port, though its shown as starting up. Cups is shown at hpiod as running.
 
I know this is going to be something basic, though I've tried all the How tos. Is there any way just to check the name assigned to my parallel port so I can maybe force it it to "see" the printer?
 HP device Manager tells me "hp-systray must be running to get device status. hp-systray requires dbus support. Device status will not be available." If I try to install device, it freezes and I can only get out of it by rebooting. Cups just tells me I can only use 127 character etc when I try to use that.
  All help will be appreciated, but please note I may not know what you're talking about if you start using jargon etc. Be gentle with me.....

[nightflier]

First thing to make sure of, is that the parallel port is initialized on boot. Run:
vasm > super > service > hwset > make sure parallel is checked > ok > cancel all the way out and reboot

[abdul.jones]

Thanks for replying Nightflier. Yes, I have set it up in VASM and apparently it's initialising at boot (I assume that's what "parallel" refers to).

[nightflier]

I have not used the HP software in years, don't want to start guessing there. Now, VL6 is getting old. Have you tried the new VL7? There is a livecd you can use for testing it out without installing.

[georgewalker]

From where can I get that VL7 livecd for testing??

[stretchedthin]

vl-live-7.0 and install iso's are here.
http://vectorlinux.com/downloads

[abdul.jones]

 Interesting, guys, but not really helpful. Can we focus on the question of getting the computer and printer to talk, rather than be side tracked about the availability of version 7. I'd like to get to grips with the one I'm using.

[nightflier]

In your browser, go to http://localhost:631/admin
Click on the "Add Printer" button. Follow the prompts.
Post the steps you take and problems that you experience.

[abdul.jones]

I just get "The printer name can only contain up to 127 printable characters...etc" (I only put in 12 letters and numbers).
  Is there any way of checking that this laptop even thinks it's got a parallel port. I've never done any printing on this laptop before so there may be an issue there. What do I have to put in to find the details of my parallel port?

[abdul.jones]

I've tried this with a lexmark z52 and it can't see that too. this also has a usb port as well as parallel. lsusb shows the printer's there, but cups still can't find it.

[nightflier]

Sorry, I'm stuck. Can not duplicate the problem. 

[nightflier]

I just get "The printer name can only contain up to 127 printable characters...etc" (I only put in 12 letters and numbers).

Did you include any spaces or special characters in the name?

[abdul.jones]

 I called it George and CUPS still didn't want to talk to it. I plugged a HP psc 500 in and called it Fred, CUPS was happy to talk to that, but I lost the plot once the select a box bit of the process started and guessed- wrongly i supposed, so I still can't print. However, System Profiler shows Fred as my current printer, so it seems CUPS itself isn't the problem.
  To return to the DJ400, my preferred printer if I can get it working, as it hasn't got a bloody great scanner attached to it...
  Having now worked out how to scroll in Xterm, I have the following gumff- which may or may not be useful:

per dmesg -c

lp0 using parport0 (interrupt driven)
lp0 console ready

parport_pc 00:0a : reported by Plug and Play ACPI
parport0 PC-style at 0x378, irq7 [PCSPP]

Other odds and ends-

cs: IO port probe 0x100-3af: excluding 0x378- 0x37f
ACPI device needs an ACPI driver
ACPI: I/O resource SiS 630_smbus [0x5080-0x5093] conflicts with ACPI region SMBP [0x5080-0x05o8f]
failed initialisatiopn of WD-7000 scsi card!
scsi <f domain> detection failed <no card>
NCR53c 406a no available ports found
ACPI power resource [LPTP] off
local APIC disabled by BIOS. You can enable it with lapic (can't!!!)

 do I even need to worry about any of these ?

lsmod reveals  module               size                    used by

                    lp                     10372                      0
                   parport_pc           35901                     
                   parport                31724                     2 lp, parport_pc
ls -al /etc/rc.d/rc.parallel  gives output of
 
 -rwxr-xr-x1 root root 1148 2006-09-29 04:41 /etc/rc.d/rc.parallel
                   

[abdul.jones]

And so the saga continues.....we have made some progress, albeit the long way round

 I thought perhaps my problem with CUPS might be caused by something not loading properly/me deleting it/the sort of things one does when one has no idea what one is doing. So I "reinstalled" Cups with Gslapt. This made no difference so I decided to "uninstall" CUPS and then "install" it. Which was what I intended. But for some reason I can't figure out, Gslapt decided it would uninstall all the packages on the computer. Probably my own fault, who knows?
  As I had no idea what was on there in the first place, and all my stuff had been backed up, I decided to do a complete reinstall- after all, I'd learned some things now, and things would be much better this time around. Duh!
  It's taken me two weeks to get my wireless conection back up, so I couldn't get CUPS configured. Anyway, it's working okay at the moment (til I do something daft). But I still can't print.
 But it's not all bad! Cups will now let me configure the printer and the printer pulls a page up ready to print, I wait 4 - 10 mins while Cups sends the test page and ...nothing. I've also tried printing a document on this laptop. Cups acknowledges it, but still won't print. I've also tried 3 different drivers off the list, including a foomatic/hpijs 2.8.12.26, no result. I've tried setting to greyscale and print black (the dj 400 only takes one cartridge at a time and it's current one is black). When I press the paper feed, it does print a nice line of smileys and hearts, but I don't think that's the test page- just the printer being friendly.
  CUPS shows the URI as parallel:/dev/lp0. I do have a dev/lp0, but there's nothing written in it. However, now CUPS is co-operating, Im hoping the solution will be easier to find and probably involves something being set/ not set on this computer. Any ideas, chaps?

 Oh, something else that's written in my notes- when I tried to read lp0 when CUPS was attempting to print, I got a message "failed to open device dev/lp.0 Device or resource busy"