how do i connect a printer via ethernet?

greetings.

i run an imac 20 inch late 2006 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running 10.7.4 and i would like to connect a sharp al-1655cs printer/copier/scanner directly to the mac. first off, i know sharp doesn't have a mac driver for this machine; but i'm hoping i can come up with some sort of "plain vanilla" solution. i've tried to establish the connection via usb and ethernet with no results. via usb, the mac identifies the sharp, thinks it delivers a print job, and 10 minutes later declares the job complete with no actual output. via ethernet, i'm not able to add an acceptable ip address (the one given on the side of the machine 080014 6d3efc -- which i've tried in groups of two, three and four separated by periods or colons). i do have a wifi router and could patch the printer into that but, frankly, i'd like to avoid buying a 20' ethernet cable. i've looked far and wide across the interweb and am not finding any help specific to direct ethernet cabling a printer to a mac running running 10.7.4. i'm pretty tech-capable, so don't be shy suggesting solutions. any help to get this going would be greatly appreciated.