I'm running slack 10.0, and Samba 3.0.4 Samba is apparently preinstalled.

Here is what I need to do:

Get my Slack box so that it can be pinged by windows boxes.
get my slack box so that windows computer can print through the slack printer.
make one certain folders shared r/w to windows without question of Identity.
make one certain folder shared read-only to windows without question of identity.
Make Slack able to read windows shared hard drives.

I've looked through the archives at the links to other samba install helpfiles, but they are not very helpfull.

The thing to do is use Swat. It makes setting up samba fairly easy. Type man swat and it will tell you how to get swat running. If you can' get it going with its help come back with more specific questions.

Try to get one thing at a time working. Work on the ping thing first. Then move to the printer thing. I would setup CUPS.

For the ping thing, what's your network setup like. Router, Hub ?

You can go the search screen and search for some answers. Anyway, shoot for one thing at a time.

what are the IPs of your two computers? How are they connected? Have you configured your printer using CUPS? For CUPS type:
localhost:631 in your web browser and follow the instructions for adding a printer. That's the first step. Making it shared will come later.
For creating a useful smb.conf file type:
localhost:901 in your web browser. That's SWAT. It's pretty helpful. Just be sure to use the 'guest ok = yes' options and remember that the linux permissions of your shares need to match what you're telling Samba to allow. In other words, if linux is restricting a share, Samba can't get past that.
Like -X- said, take one little bit at a time and tell us how your network is set up.