Thanks to good advice here, I have solved my printer problem.When it became clear that lilo was loading the wrong kenel, I removed Debian and Redhat from my computer. I then cleaned out mbr.
I reinstalled Debian. The kernel is now 2.2.19 pre17. I used the echo method and it printed.
Hoping for a magic solution to my internet problem, I tried wvdial. However, the same thing happens, it connects and dies.