OS X not finding my printer

Question

First, let me say I'm a UNIX systems programmer, and have been a programmer for over 25 years. I cannot get this to work - I'm stumped.
I recently purchased a MacBook Pro. It's running MacOS 10.4.10.
I have an old Epson Stylus Color 850Ne printer. It connects via serial port or Ethernet ONLY. There is no USB connection.
I currently have it connected by Ethernet to:
A UNIX box running RedHat Linux
A laptop running Windows
A Mac G4 running Mac OS 9
All of them can print to the printer without problems.
The MacBook Pro running 10.4.9 or 10.4.10 cannot "see" the printer. I can "ping" it from Terminal using its IP address. I can connect to its Ethernet via Safari to look at its configuration or make changes (http to it's IP address accesses the interface).
But, the Mac simply won't see it when I try to add it as a printer. It won't see it under Ethernet, or Appletalk. I tried adding it as an IP printer but that didn't work either. (This mechanism has a MAJOR bug - it ignores the IP address I give it and creates an entry using the IP address 127.0.0.1 which is the localhost - that'll never work).
In any event, I'm pretty well stumped as to how to get this printer to work with the MacBook. I've contacted Epson but they said it's not their problem since I'm not using their drivers. They don't have drivers for the Intel Macs so Epson is pretty useless.
A secondary problem to this, and possibly related, is the fact that someone at Apple must have decided that you can only be connected to one network at a time. So, when I'm connected to the Internet (via wireless, broadband or modem) I cannot access my LAN. So, I would not be able to print any web pages I find even if I could get the printer to work. I also can't get to any of the other 3 machines sitting on the LAN. I can understand why it doesn't work the other way - getting from a machine on the LAN through the Mac to the Internet. But, when I'm on the Internet, I should still be able to telnet, ftp or share files with other machines on the LAN from the MacBook. There doesn't seem to be any way to configure this. I can talk to machines on the LAN. Or I can talk to machines on the Internet. But, I can't do both at the same time. Again, this is something I can do on the other 3 machines.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Open Printer Setup Utility in the Utilities folder. Select IP Printer from the PSU toolbar. For Protocol select Line Printer Daemon - LPD from the drop down menu. In Address field enter the printer's actual IP address with which it's configured. Should be within the DHCP range of your router. In Queue field put a straight forward name for the queue. It's usually best to keep it within 11 characters without spaces such as, 'epson_850' without quotes.
From the Print Using drop down menu select Epson and from the printer list locate and select the Epson 850 printer driver. You can enter a Name and Location in the appropriate fields if you desire. Click on the Add button.