Can I share my Vista printer with OS9?

EDIT - somehow I missed the networking forum, if an admin could kindly move the post, I'd appreciate it.

Hey all, new here, actually pretty new to macs in general. I bought my daughter a cheap iMac G3 off craigslist (mostly to keep her off my laptop). It has both OS9 and OSX, but most of her toddler games run best on OS9, so that's what it boots to.

I snagged a cheap AirPort card off ebay, so in addition to getting it hooked up to the internet, I'd like to try to set it up so that she can print from her iMac to the printer that's connected to my laptop -- but it runs Vista (home premium).

I can't find a lot of info on this (naturally, OS9 and Vista are not only two different animals, but two different eras), any thoughts?

The printer is an HP Deskjet 5740 if that makes a difference (it plugs in via USB to the laptop).

The big question is whether there is a compatible OS9 driver for this printer. If it is relatively new, then I'd be surprised if HP supplies a driver for it for OS9 (OS9 has been pretty much unsupported for about 5 years now).

Actually, it looks like they do! (it's kind of an old printer)

Select software and drivers 

But my problem is I have positively no idea what I'm doing. I could barely figure out how to change the system settings (though I did actually manage to change the cmos battery and upgrade the RAM).

I wish I could direct you further, unfortunately, my experience with versions prior to OS X is very limited.

You may be better off running that G3 with OS X, it will make the printer networking much, much easier.

You probably know this, but OS X can run OS 9 apps (including those games) by opening up OS 9 in the background. Just try and run those games from OS X, you will find they just run

I've tried all of her games under OSX (I was leaning that way myself) but at least half of them either don't run, or are glitchy. Now that I know HP makes a driver for this, I will play with it when I get the AirPort card.

When in Classic and connected to the net, download the HP file for OS 9, it will appear on the desktop, double click, run the software, go into Chooser and select.

Keep us posted?

What an interesting journey this is becomming, especially for a mac newbie like myself.

Anyway, after I figured out how to get the AirPort card working and getting it on the internet, I realized that there aren't really any good browsers out there for OS 9 (except maybe icab). In addition to the physical CD games she has, she also likes to play games on pbskids.org so I need something better.

So I decided just to bite it and use OS X. Some of her games won't work, even in classic mode, but whatever. But then I found that the version of OS X that came with her computer is 10.1, which, nobody makes a browser for either!!! I need at least 10.2 to get Firefox 2... (and for Windows networking support, more about that below)

Fine, hit up craigslist, found somebody who will sell me an old set of Jaguar discs for cheap, and get it installed.

So Firefox is installed, but Java doesn't work (needed for pbskids.org), so Firefox installs the missing plugin... wrong version, pbskids.org doesn't work. Fought with it for a while, figured out how to download Flash 9 and get it in the right folder, restart Firefox, hooray it works!

So coming back to the printer problem. I figure since Jaguar and AirPort is working, I'll download the HP drivers and have it up and running in no time. LOL, not.

I configured smb with my workgroup name, so in finder, connect to server, the iMac can see my vista laptop, but when I try to connect to it, I get an error (don't remember the exact error now). And beyond all that, I can't figure out how to install a "network printer". In Windows, I typically would have installed the drivers, then "switched" it in the settings from a physical connection to a network address, but I can't figure out how to do that in OS X.

I gave up for the weekend. Her website works, I'll keep fighting with the printer next weekend.