wrenchinjunk,

a bit more information about the hardware setup und the software you intend to use would be helpfull. We need to know what you´re talking about...

For me personally it is quite difficult to support since I don´t use an Pi myself but out of your description it seems to me that the basic installation of the board failed or is not complete. I think the Pi is NOT recognized as a new hardware device or available in the divice mamagement of your PC because usually use the SD card is used to get an operating system on it.

What I would do is to follow the instructions on their website and just download an operating system to test the device: http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

If you sure that the Pi is working, then I would try to get some software for the printer on it...