I was actually hoping to find an old wired ethernet printer that I can print to from my old Macs as well as from the new ones, but it's very inconvenient to track down the right model, and one that has all the parts.

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I don't know if you're willing to look at used printers, but the HP 2100TN is a nice little black and white printer and it has LocalTalk built in. If you want ethernet you can add a JetDirect EIO card. The 10/100 cards are now pretty cheap (less than $20).

I read the help for Mac OS X printer sharing. It accepts PostScript jobs using the LPD protocol. But it didn't say whether the printer had to be PostScript, or if interpretation was built-in. Doesn't that mean that any vintage Mac with the LaserWriter 8 driver can print through the Mac OS X machine.

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You would think it does. However, on my Kyocera EPS C170N color laser printer, which claims OS9.x as a minimum, I can print to it using Laserwriter 8 on my OS 9.x machines, but when I boot into OS 8.x, I cannot print to it.

I'm not sure what the difference is. It supports AppleTalk protocol over ethernet (or the specs claim it does).

But then I haven't experimented much with it yet, either. I only mention it, because while you would think that Postscript support would be independent of OS version, at least a little evidence suggests that it is not or that there are other more subtle requirements.