Any experience with Brother MFC-420 CN printer?

[Peter Tenenbaum <quarkpt@gmail.com>]

I've been migrating my computer resources over from a 6 year old WXP computer to a brand-new Debian Linux one.  Most recently I tried to migrate our old printer, a Brother MFC-420 CN printer / scanner / fax with USB connection.  Brother has CUPS and LPD drivers for it, and they have 2 sets of instructions for installing the drivers (one pretty much automatic, one more manual).

I've tried both sets of instructions, and it almost works.  The printer is detected by the computer when it is first connected; the install appears to go correctly, and the printer appears correctly in the CUPS browser interface.  When I send print jobs, no errors appear, and the print jobs are shown as "completed" in the CUPS browser interface.  However, no printed pages ever appear.  Printing from the command line, applications, test prints -- none of them result in printed output.

Has anyone else had problems like this?  Any suggestions for how to resolve?

I realize that this is something of a long shot, but I have to say that the responses I've gotten to questions and problems on this list have been borderline-miraculous in fixing my problems, so I figured I'd give it a shot!  I've also asked the Linux support people at Brother for assistance.

Thanks in advance,
-PT