by My first step was to restore LPRng from my distribution disk. I had
tried bsdlpr which gave me new problems and still no solution. In
the course of installing LPRng I wrote over the /etc/printcap file
with the default. This defines a generic printer with spooling
directory sd:/usr/spool/lpd:sh
After rebooting I found that LPD was an active process. Great, now
I commented out the generic printer and added the hplj entry, but
now LPD wouldn't stay resident. The hplj spooling directory
is /usr/spool/lp1, and yes, the directory exists and there was stuff
in it. I changed the spooling directory to /usr/spool/lpd and,
lo, the system came up and I printed my first sheet using lpr.
Thanks for all the help and suggestions.