Some of us, including me, still use old but cheap and reliable LaserWriters (I have the LaserWriter 4/600). Others use serial or USB printers. Not all work hassle free under OS X. But there's a simple solution. You need:

1. An old Mac with a working (serial) printer (StyleWriters, LaserWriter, USB-printer -- no QuickDraw printers).
2. A network connection (wired or wireless) from your new Mac to your old Mac, which will soon become a print server.
3. The free software Print66, which is a print server / spooler.

Here's a bit more detail on the problem and solution...from time to time (i.e. from system version to system version), there may be problems (or not) printing via AppleTalk. Leopard 10.5.2 and/or AirPort, for example, do not find any LocalTalk printers at the moment (perhaps Apple will address this issue, but nobody knows). Furthermore, you must now use OS 9 on the elder machine, which allows "File Sharing via TCP/IP." But there's a simple and free solution (which was time consuming and difficulat to find): Print66, a free print server for the classic Mac OS. As far as I see, it addresses all printing issues and will work forever reliably (as long as your new Mac's got a suitable printer description file and your old Mac does, too). Print66 is a print server and spooler, running on the old Mac (68K and PowerPC), waiting for data from the network. If you can reach the old Mac from the network, you can send data -- printing data as well. The ReadMe describes the set up process very well and in detail. In short: Edit the setup file Print66 reads at startup. Here you define the printer and the host's IP address and you're done. Avoid special characters. Mine reads, for example:

PRINTER    psnormal PAP "LaserWriter Normal" POSTSCRIPT
...
HOST 10.0.1.1
HOST 10.0.1.199

I tried LaserWriter 4/600 (Normal) for the printer name, but that did not work -- I got a 'printer not found' error, so I had to rename it with Apple Printer Utility. The two HOST lines are the IP addresses from my Time Capsule and my MacBook Pro; I wasn't quite sure which one was needed so I used both.

On the Mac OS X side, you add a new printer (System Preferences » Print & Fax » click the Plus sign » IP printer » LPD » choose a printer description file). Address is your old Mac's IP address, queue is psnormal in my case (or whatever you wrote behind PRINTER and before PAP in the Print66 setup file).

That's it. You should now be able to print to an old LaserWriter or StyleWriter. You should probably define and use fixed IP addresses (which normally are dynamically assigned via AirPort Base Station/Time Capsule), to make sure the host and the print server find each other after a restart.