Re. Total Confusion

[Sidney Brooks]

Following your suggestions, I have installed the parport and lp modules and 
changed the BIOS to make the parallel port bidirectional. Windows 
recognized the printer port change. Debian still will not print. When using 
echo to tell it to print, it says "no such device" to both /lp0 and /lp1.
As for the ping suggestion, I think that I tried it about a week ago 
without success. The clue that I do not know how to use is that my ISP 
administrator had no trouble connecting his computer through my line to the 
internet.