Print problems revisited

[squareyes]

Hi all,
am getting near the point of desperation,
In just over 4 years I have *never* managed to print a *single page
*using any Linux distro. The best has been with Man10, where I could
print a page of text, but only the left hand 2 thirds of it. The remaining
right hand third of the page just dissapeared.

squareyes at here:/dev$ ls /dev/lp0
/dev/lp0

does this mean the parallel port is OK, All 3 printers I have,
Epson LQ 500, Epson LX 300, HP Laserjet 4Plus, used to work under
Windows on this machine, and others seem to be able to get Old Epson
printers to work, could it be a hardware problem?  Have tried 3 
different parallel cables,
printers show as being ready, and printing, just don't get any output.
Does anyone have any other ideas I may try?, or do I continue on saving 
to floppy, and
moving to my old 166 Windows machine to print,(the only option so far).
I am starting to worry as I live in a very small town, and am waiting 
for all those I have been
handing out the Ubuntu CD's to,  on my doorstep with printer problems 
that I can't
solve, can't fix my own, so they will have no hope :-)

When I setup the HP laserjet, there were options in the list for
Parallel Port #1 (epson) and Parallel Port #2 (epson), but with the 
epson printer connected
these options are no longer there. First option is Parallel Port #1 does 
this mean anything?
I have the option of aquiring a HP laserjet 1100, but am wary of another 
printer that is only
valid use is as a boat anchor, have 3 already. According the Linuxprint 
it should work,
but linux print said the others should too. Certainly can't afford a new 
one which may behave just the
same anyway. 4 years of trying is not really confidence boosting, 
haven't given up yet,
but am getting close. :-)

Thanks in advance,
Take Care
Winton