Printer not working, blame MODPROBE ?

[payam]

I've been spending some time trying to get my USB printer to work (been used to it just working before I switched from the uber-bloated Mandrake 9).

So I followed the directions in the Gentoo Printing How-To: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/printing-howto.xml

I checked the "Support for USB" and "USB Printer support" options in the kernel configuration, and I got the usbcore.o and printer.o files in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-gentoo-r5/drivers/usb/ directory after doing a full "make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install && cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot && reboot"

I also have "cups" and "usb" in my USE variables.

When I do "modprobe usbcore" I get the error message "modprobe: Can't locate module usbcore"

"modprobe printer" DOES work, and it shows up in lsmod

I have an hp deskjet 940c. I get nothing when I do cat /proc/bus/usb/devices and I'm using Gentoo Sources 2.4.20r5.

Any suggestions?