usb + brother printer woes

[Graham Seaman <graham@theseamans.net>]

Hi,

I have a little old Pentium 2 machine I decided to set up as a print 
server. No usb,
so I bought a Belkin pci usb card.  Running on stable, but upgraded to 
2.4.24 with
usbcore, OHCI, and usb printer modules. Now I'm trying to use it with a 
Brother
HL-5040 laser printer, but it just won't see it.
/dev/usb/lp0 is there, but /proc/bus/usb/devices is empty (should it 
be?); I've installed
the Brother driver and my printcap shows:

lp|HL5040:\
       :mx=0:\
       :sd=/var/spool/lpd/HL5040:\
       :sh:\
       :lp=/dev/usb/lp0:\
       :if=/usr/local/Brother/lpd/filterHL5040:

but when I try to print all I get is
  
       waiting for lp to become ready (offline ?)

I guess this means it's a usb problem but don't know how to go about 
diagnosing it.
( I know the printer will also work with parallel, but my parallel port 
is physically broken...)

Any suggestions for the next step?

Thanks
Graham