Printers :: HELP! Printer settings not retained!

Every time I get the printer set up, it somehow manages to fail sometime later, and I have NO IDEA why. It seems that there's just one little thing that I keep missing, and I have no idea what it is.

I have no difficulty printing the test page, but I can't seem to print anything else. The DSL menu -> System -> Printer/lpd -> start procedure and the "export PRINTER=lp" command aren't enough to fix things.

The contents of the env command do show PRINTER=lp

The contents of my .filetool.lst file (relevant to printing) are:
opt/printcap
opt/apsfilter
var/spool/lpd/lp

The contents of opt/printcap are:
# APS1_BEGIN:printer1
# - don't delete start label for apsfilter printer1
# - no other printer defines between BEGIN and END LABEL
lp|stp/escp2-740;r=300x300;q=medium;c=full;p=letter;m=auto:\
:lp=/dev/usb/lp0:\
:if=/usr/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
:lf=/var/spool/lpd/lp/log:\
:af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct:\
:mx#0:\
:sh:
# APS1_END - don't delete this

HELP! What's the one critical thing I'm missing? Could someone PLEASE list everything I need to check when things aren't printing?

The directory /ramdisk/var/spool/lpd has no files. I'm thinking that this has something to do with my problem. But what? What should be in this directory, and how do I get the appropriate content in?

original here.