Netatalk works as advertised and is a complete no-brainer on a Linux server. The latest versions even support Time Machine. It's stable, simple to set up (by UNIX daemon standards) and I've used it for over a decade.
That said, Googling the mailing lists/forums suggest that Netatalk is pretty broken when it comes to running on OS X as the server. Unless it's been magically fixed recently the best chance you'd have for Netatalk fixing your problems would be to set up a Linux machine to act as a file and print server and use it as a way station between the Classic and the Neo-Macs.
(I still have 10.5 on both my MacBook Pros, so I can't try compiling it myself on 10.6 to see exactly what problems there may be.)