I have an old Toshiba satellite 486 laptop that I want to make into a home print server. It should be able to work with windows and samba machines (Mac OS X) without requiring too much special configuration. It has no CD-ROM drive so I need to use a floppy distro or boot from a floppy and install over FTP. I don't have any other Linux machines so NFS install is out of the question. Network connection will be in the form of a PCMCIA card hooked up directly to a Linksys router. I know it's a tall order, but I'm sure it can be done somehow.

You can share you're printer with samba(server). The easiest way to configure a samba server is using by webmin.
For printing from a Windows box you need a Postscript printer driver. The easiest is downloading the Adobe Postscript printer driver.
I don't know what driver you'll need for Mac OS X but it should have some sort of postscript driver

Hi.

In order to install your server you'll need to download 6 disk images from :
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dist...es-1.44/bf2.4/

Download all six images:
rescue.bin (also known as boot disk)
root.bin (kernel image disk)
driver-1.bin
driver-2.bin
driver-3.bin
driver-4.bin

You should also download rawrite2.zip in order to create six diskettes from the images you previously downloaded, from:
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/tools/

See installation manual at:
http://www.debian.org/distrib/floppyinst

This setup requires a dsl internet connection, and your printer server connected to it.

| SERVER | ---------- |ROUTER| ---------- | DSL MODEM |

Just insert your rescue disk and turn on your PC. Swap disks as needed. Eventually you will reach a point from where installation packages will be downloaded from the internet for you. To enable printer sharing for winboxes, Samba is your best option.