Beginners question connecting printer

[Arjen de Winter <chow_chow@hotmail.com>]

Hi,

I have a problem connecting a Deskjet 340 to a Macintosh laptop running
OS 8.1. I don't really know about Macintosh, except the _really_ basic
things.

As far as I understood (the OS is in French to make things even more
complicated) the computer doesn't see the printer. It keeps asking me to
check if it's connected and switched on. Well, I connected the
printercable to the port with the printer/modem-icon so I suppose that's
OK. Other things like "is it switched on?" and "does it have enough
paper?" are taken care of. There is a compatible driver installed.

The thing I'm asking is: do I need to enable Appletalk for this or is
this the normal parallel connection?
Any suggestions about what possibly / probably the problem may be?
(Preferably _with_ solution). Again: I'm a dummy on Apple so please go
step_to_step with me on this.

Thanks,

Arjen