Not being a pain at all!
The first thing you may want to try regardless, printer or no, is to run Software Update update to bring 10.4.5 to 10.4.11, along with all the associated security updates for 10.4.11. Updated printer drivers tend to lurk in some or several of those updaters.
There may, however, be another thing to try.
The first is using the unix-based utility called “cups”, or “common UNIX printing system”. It’s built-in on every Mac running OS X. On Tiger, cups runs in the background by default. The other might lie somewhere in
this suggestion, as your HP Envy 5660 could be based on the older Samsung print engine found in many modern HP printers (that said, this only applies to those HP printers which use a toner cartridge and not, typically, an inkjet module).
For cups: Open a browser like Safari or
Interweb-PPC. (For this, any browser should get you there, as it’s not online.) Browse to
http://127.0.0.1:631 [127.0.0.1 is the system’s internal IP address and accessible only to that computer; the :631 is port 631, the port associated with cups].
You’ll find a menu with options, including “Manage Printers”. Click on that.
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It should then offer you the option to “Add Printer”.
The cups web interface is generally the “when the ‘Print & Fax’ prefPane isn’t doing the trick” alternative, as ‘Print & Fax’ relies heavily on cups but doesn’t always have as granular configuration control as cups itself does.
The page after “Add printer” typically has three text entry lines. This just lets you give a name for your printer, like “test” or “Hortense,” and only one link needs to be filled (usually just “name”). For the following, I just used the name “test”.
Next, it will ask where the printer can be found.
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My guess is yours is “USB Printer (usb)”, if connecting to the printer directly from the iBook, but it’s entirely possible “AppSocket/HP JetDirect” or “Internet Printing Protocol (ipp)” might also work (since your printer is on the local wifi network and has an IP address assigned to it by your router).
The particular syntax of what to include in the “IPP” option may be buried somewhere in the HP owner’s guide. “Hostname” for a local network will be either your wifi router’s IP address or its name on the local network.
Also, if your printer can be connected directly to your wifi router, via USB, this should make the printer visible to the router and, also, available through its wifi. Although a long shot, it might also appear under “Print & fax”.
Back to cups:
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This will be the start of some trial and error. Each of these options has specific information which needs to be completed and particular to that device type.
But once you’ve identified the printer to cups, it should then ask which class of printer driver the printer needs. Because the old-Mac/new-printer combo may mean there’s no suitable driver for the Envy, try “HP” first and continue with the steps. If that doesn’t work, try “Generic”.
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It will then ask which model you have. As the ENVY series won’t likely be on the list, go with a “generic” option. After this, the printer should then be set up with the cups server, or “cupsd”.
Although I accessed the above using my iBook running 10.4.11, I don’t have a printer like yours to test this. The last printer I owned (a laser printer from Xerox, and for which this iBook G3 is still configured should it ever “re-appear” on the network) was donated several years ago.
It’s possible cups may not be
the fix to get you to print successfully, but I’ve found it has helped me in certain cases when I was having trouble connecting to a local network printer in, for example, a computer lab at uni.
But at the very least, you ought to update your iBook via Software Update.
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APPENDING to add: Although I’ve never tried using it, the open source utility called
Gutenprint may help here. The version linked,
5.2.9, should work for OS X 10.3 and up and is the last to support Tiger (with 5.2.10 for Leopard and above).
