PowerMac OS8 printer setup - how?

I'm new to Macs and the operating systems thereof. An old PowerMac 7100 was working with an Epson Color 1520, driven from one of the two serial ports to the serial port on the printer. Failed to see printer one morning. Suspected power surge may have taken out serial port. Installed good motherboard, but still won't print. Tried a second Epson which had worked okay before; no luck. Now think am down to a bad cable (but no reason to suspect it); or a bad configuration (e.g., inexperienced operator). I also installed a new OS-8 on a second HD, accepting the defaults in ignorance, but it won't print either!
- What extensions must be active to make it go? I have Epson drivers for OS7.5, as well as a system CD for OS7.5, and one for OS8.0. I pretty well know my way around PCs but not Macs.

Thanks for any help,
Mac Harper

Extensions would include the printer driver and maybe some shared "libraries" that also are extensions, nothing like the libraries in OS X.

Turn on all the extensions so all doubt one is missing is removed. I can't recall whether 7.5 has an Extension Manager. I think 8 does. But if not, go into the System Folder and drag all the extensions from the Extensions (Disabled) folder to the Extensions folder, then restart the machine. It would be worth it to make sure nothing is left in the Extensions (Disabled) folder in any case.

Any extension change means the machine won't recognize the difference unless it's restarted.

Make sure the Chooser is in the Apple Menu Items folder. It's home really isn't critical, but its pathway might be screwed up.

After you click on the Chooser and the window opens, wait at least 10 seconds or you notice that its icon at the right on the menu bar across the top is blinking. If it is, previous printing jobs are stuffing up the queue and nothing can get through.

But even if it isn't blinking, wait the 10 or 15 seconds it will take to line up the printing queue — if background printing in the Chooser window is turned on. Then click the icon. A window showing a jammed printing-job queue might show up. If so, delete each job, then go back into the Chooser and turn off background printing so it can't happen again. Even if there is no jammed queue, turn background printing off. It's a needless complication.

If none of those is the problem, a Chooser bug might have reared its ugly head. Sometimes it forgets everything unless it can show a choice of more than one printer, preferably one with Apple in its name, or a Stylewriter. Regardless, click on a dummy printer icon, then the Epson's and try it again.

Make shure its pluged into the printer port,not the modem port,and ckeck the ethernet control panel and it says printer port.And yes cables go bad,they should have two way arrows on them. Turn off Apple Talk in the Chooser.