I'm not sure how really helpful this is, but I have the exact same problem as you, Ted, except this problem has been nagging me since 10.0. I have never been able to connect to my G4 and usually end up with some sort of system hang. In particular, make sure that it is actually set to allow read privileges to the world. When it's all operating correctly, if you connect as Guest to an OS X machine, you should see a list of usernames. Select the one you want and their Public folder is mounted on your desktop named with their username.
Permissions are fine.
I can connect as Guest via Chooser but get zilch where there should be a list of usernames.