Today the next challenge arised. A year and a half ago, we bought a 'cheap' Epson color laser printer, that only supported Windows printing. It's hooked up to the Windows 2000 PC that is also the router and firewall for the network I'm on. Back then I didn't think it much of a problem that it was basically a 'windows only' printer, but today it hit me... It would be really annoying if I couldn't print.
I fired up the printing dialog (System->Administration) and tried "Add new printer". All the AcuLasers where there, except of course the C900, the only one who doesn't know any 'real' printer languages....
So, on to Google. Through the Linux Printing.org page on the C900 I found a reference to the ALC900-cups project at SourceForge. The Readme included in the tar file was pretty clear, and the process reasonably painless. I did have to install some packages to get the install script to continue all the way, but they where all available through the Ubuntu repositories. The packages I had to install where:
a2ps
psutils (which contains things like psnup, psresize, psmerge, psselect, which the ACL900-cups package needed)

After that the install script downloaded everything else it needed (things like pipsplus packages).

So it was all installed. The readme told me to run lpadmin -p -v smb://192.168.25.23/AcuLaserC900
The last part I think should be the printer's name on the Windows host but I'm not sure. In any case, this didn't work well for me. The printer appeared in the printing dialog, but trying to run a test page gave me an error: "Printing to 'Aculaser900' failed with error code: 1286
is the printer paused ?"
I posted a message to the Forum of the project at SourceForge, and the owner of the project responded very quickly, where I could look for error messages (/var/log/alc900.log and /var/log/cups/error_log). The alc900.log didn't show much in the way of errors, and the cups error log gave this: "I [22/Apr/2005:12:10:02 +0200] print_job: destination 'Aculaser900' is not accepting jobs."

Not much clue there. My boyfriend pointed out to me I could try adding the printer as an LPR printer instead. So I went to the print dialog, selected LPR printer, filled in the Windows machine's IP and selected the C900 driver (which, undoubtedly thanks to the acl900-cups package was now in the list) and tried a test page. No error this time, and it appeared in the Windows Machine's queue, but it didn't print.... For the heck of it I tried printing an email... and it printed! It printed!!

So, happy again, another challenge succesfully completed, full printing capabilities under Ubuntu with a 'Windows only' printer. Ubuntu++ !!