I can't help you much, except to say that I use a very cheap HP5200 printer for digital negs, and it works well enough for me. I've printed negs for cyanotype, vandyke, kallitype, gum and carbon.
One thing to consider: ink tank printers have fixed heads, which can clog if you don't use them for a while. I don't think cartridge printers have that problem.
You can probably get more responses to your question over on photrio. There's a good alt process group there.