Regarding my slow HP Laserjet and NetBSD printing via the
parallel port... I replaced the parallel cable with a USB->parallel port
cable. I immediately got the following message in syslog: 

ulpt0 at uhub0 port 2 configuration 1 interface 0 
ulpt0: vendor 0x1293 product 0x0002, rev 1.00/1.04, addr 2, iclass 7/1

Excellent!  Printing is now faster - the mouse in X no longer gets
jerky and the system doesn't bog down while sending data to the
printer.  I'm still going to go from 8 to 24 meg RAM in the printer, but
at least the problem is mostly resolved.  




Brian