Help! CUPS in Kubuntu is driving me crazy

[D. R. Evans]

Unwilling to admit defeat, I have now also tried administration
through localhost:631, and, as a last resort, manual configuring by
editing the conf files.

I get the same result, no matter how I try to configure the printer.

FWIW, the PPD file that Kubuntu puts into /etc/cups/ppd is identical
to the PPD file  that  Mandriva puts there, and also identical to the
one on the machine that is physically connected to the printer.

Is there any chance that CUPS is simply broken in 6.06.1?? It hardly
seems likely, since surely others would be seeing the same problems.
But I figured that I'd better ask.

Time now to reboot back into Mdv, so I can get some work done :-(

PS Incidentally, CUPS never restarts properly from inside the web
admin interface; it has to be restarted manually :-(