Help! CUPS in Kubuntu is driving me crazy

[D. R. Evans]

Here's the setup:

Brother HL-1040 printer physically connected to a Mdv 2006 system running CUPS.

The printer is visible and works fine from:

1. The system to which it is attached
2. Windows systems on the network
3. An old Mandrake 9.2 system
4. A new 64-bit Mdv 2006 system (actually, the same system on which
I;m running Kubuntu, but booted into a different OS)

I have just spent three hours trying to get Kubuntu to do something
sensible, and am totally failing :-(

I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that Kubuntu won't let
me log in as root and get administrative tasks done easily, but I
don't think that this is the cause of these problems.

So I found a "printers" menu item in K | Settings | Printers.

1. Add Printer
2. Click "Remote CUPS Server"
3. Leave on "anonymous"
4. Host: 192.168.0.1
  This finds the printer (BROTHEHL1040) OK...

5. I seem to need to find a driver at this point (not sure why; the
Mdv 2006 system seemed to find the printer and install everything
automatically); the other systema are all old systems that I don't
recall the details of any more).
6. Select BROTHER hl7x0 (which is the driver on the machine to which
the printer is attached, and also the driver on the 64-but Mdv system)
7. Print "Test" -- I'm not sure what is supposed to print, but what
actually prints is a single sheet that says:

-12345X at PJL
@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = HBP
@L at G

The fact that _something_ prints indicates that I must be close, but I
have not been able to get past this point :-(

This is a showstopper for me; if I can't get the printer working
properly, I'll have to go back to Mdv -- after having decided that I
was switching because so many other things didn't work in Mdv, but do
work in Kubuntu; but none of those things is as fundamental as
printing.