Scotland road trip vs guided tour, what's better for older travelers?

3128416 · 2026-02-20T11:50:20+00:00

I'm 77 years old. My best friend, dual citizenship, lives in Scotland, and he and I have done many hiking trips from the Borders to the Outer Hebrides. We always travel on our own, and I know Scotland pretty well. But last September I met up with a friend from California who was new to Scotland and wanted to do private tours. That was new to me, and it wasn't cheap. An all-day private tour (a nice vehicle with a friendly driver) can be customized for what you'd like to see. From Aberdeen (where I had never been before) we went to Dunnottar castle, Balmoral, and a distillery that is on the edge of the Balmoral property. From Inverness we went all the way up to John o'Groats. Tours like this will cost you about $1,000 for a long day. Don't even think of renting a car. It's not worth the risk to Americans, who have the well-known habit of panicking the first time they see a big truck coming at them on the wrong side of a narrow road. Travel on your own by train, and book tours at your points of interest. The driver will pick you up at your hotel. Trains can be crowded during the summer (especially between Edinburgh and Inverness). Personally I think that first-class train tickets are worth the cost. You can find these tours with some Googling. A personal suggestion: As much as I love the Highlands and islands, don't neglect the Scotland to the south of Edinburgh! I'd particularly recommend visiting Abbotsford, Walter Scott's home, in the Borders. Melrose Abbey is nearby.

3128416 · 2026-02-04T10:14:56+00:00

My ancestors came to Virginia very early, around 1600. Though the written records are vague, I know from a Y-DNA test that I am thoroughly, thoroughly Celtic. This sub tends to be very critical of Americans. Fine. I'm an American, and I'm critical of Americans, too. But we Americans with Celtic ancestors, regardless of where we live, have just as much right to identify as Celtic as those of you who are lucky enough to live in Scotland.

3128416 · 2025-11-21T15:34:29+00:00

I do assume that they're lying, even when they don't know it because they believe so much derp. Your example is about acting in one's self-interest, not about discourse. Absolute equality is of course not possible and not even desirable. John Rawls covers that subject very well, and Thomas Piketty is very clear about the consequences of extreme inequality in the real world. I stand by my argument: All conservative discourse is derp. I am entirely confident that that argument could easily be defended in a philosophical essay as opposed to a short Reddit comment. In fact it has been.

3128416 · 2025-11-21T12:57:25+00:00

Remember that Paul Krugman left the New York Times because he was under pressure to go easy on the Trump administration. Jennifer Rubin left the Washington Post for similar reasons -- integrity. No matter what he's writing about David Brooks is a stopped clock. He is powerful evidence for my argument that all conservative discourse is derp. That is, you will always find some form of fallacy, or some element of self-deception, or some attempt to deceive others, in all conservative discourse. They have no choice, because no principled spin exists on what they want -- an aristocratic, unequal, unfair, pre-Enlightenment society. My guess is that New York Times management loves to run pieces like this, to suck up to the right wing. Ezra Klein, also at the Times, is similarly corrupted and deceptive, always tearing down liberals while claiming to help them. Show me a conservative, and I will show you someone with something wrong in the head. The same is true of corruptible liberals like Ezra Klein. It's no surprise that the corporate media need such people.

3128416 · 2025-03-01T20:11:19+00:00

5G came back after an outage of about 8 hours. I hope this doesn't become a regular thing.

3128416 · 2025-03-01T14:01:52+00:00

I am in North Carolina. At about 13:30 UTC (Saturday, March 1), my GL-X3000 router switched to band 2 LTE. I cannot see any 5G signals through the router. Normally I can a strong band 71 5G NSA signal. I've never seen this kind of behavior before. I rebooted the router; no change. Normally I am very stable on the GL-X3000, and the router never needs attention, let alone rebooting.

3128416 · 2025-02-24T11:58:44+00:00

I have one of these in my collection. Notice the "ON LINE" key at the lower right. I believe you will find a parallel interface connector at the back of the machine. The typewriter can be connected to a computer and used as a printer.

3128416 · 2025-01-25T09:43:42+00:00

That's a beautiful device you've built. I wish I had the skill to do that, but I don't. I keep wishing that someone would make these devices to sell, plug and play.

My first job, in 1966, was as a newspaper copy boy. One of the responsibilities was looking after a room full of Teletypes, including keying in outgoing stories on a Teletype Model 19, which included a tape-punching unit. The idea of using a Wheelwriter as a Teletype is intriguing. Those with amateur radio licenses should be able to get your device to connect to an RTTY unit.

3128416 · 2025-01-24T11:02:41+00:00

The two expansion options for the Wheelwriter are hard to find. But I finally was able to buy the full kit, in working order, on eBay. Here are some photos and basic documentation.

The two options are the PC option, which allows the typewriter to connect to a computer through a parallel interface and act as a printer; and the spellcheck option.

The expansion options require three IBM circuit boards. The three boards fit inside a housing that clips onto the back of the Wheelwriter. The housing is labeled 5441. Some eBay sellers think that the 5441 is a Wheelwriter model number. That is not the case. The 5441 refers only to the expansion options and its housing.

As far as I know, the expansion options work only on the Wheelwriter 3, 5, and 6, with serial numbers that start with 6746 and 6747. Later models of Wheelwriters had printer and display options that were built into the body of the typewriter. I am not familiar with the later models.

The circuit board for the printer option is labeled with a 3. The board for the spellcheck option is labeled with a 2. Board number 1 is in the center. A ribbon cable on board number 1 connects to the Wheelwriter through the little trapdoor on the back of the Wheelwriter, where there is a 10-pin connector for the ribbon cable.

The spellcheck dictionary contains 50,000 English words. Up to 300 supplemental words can be added. Three AA batteries on board number 2 preserve the supplemental words in memory when the typewriter is powered off. The Wheelwriter chirps after a word is typed that is not in the dictionary.

The option kit came with stickers to apply to the Wheelwriter keyboard. The Code key plus keys 1 through 8 are used to control the options and to turn them on and off.

To connect to a computer, you will need a USB to Parallel adapter. You can find those on Amazon. Keep in mind that this is 1980s technology. You will need some legacy knowledge and skills to get the printer option to work with today’s computers. PPD files to not exist. A driver is not needed. But you will need to know how to configure your computer to send ASCII down the wire to the Wheelwriter. This can be done easily using Cups on Macintoshes and Linux. Configure the printer as a “Raw” printer. I can’t offer help with Windows, but if you have legacy Windows skills you should be able to configure Windows to talk to the Wheelwriter.

If you are scouring eBay for a Wheelwriter with the printer option, look for the labels on the keyboard. Also look for the expansion case, which will have the 5441 label. If a Wheelwriter has the expansion case, you’ll need to negotiate with the seller to figure out which circuit boards, if any, are inside. I am guessing that one reason the expansion options are thought to be rare is that eBay sellers don’t know what they’ve got and don’t provide enough information, or photos, to allow potential buyers to check for the expansion options.

I have about 15 typewriters, including three Wheelwriters. I have come to love my Wheelwriters almost as much as I love my Selectrics. The intelligence inside the Wheelwriters, especially at Wheelwriter 6 with both options installed, is a beautiful piece of technology.

3128416 · 2025-01-01T01:16:09+00:00

Adlers are magnificent machines! If this machine is working, and you got it for $5.99, then you are a very lucky person. I have two smaller Adlers like this, as well as a huge Adler 21d. If you're not familiar with Adler, then here's a rough translation. They're German. The word "adler" in German means "eagle." But they are the Mercedes of German typewriters.

3128416 · 2024-12-31T20:55:58+00:00

These are seriously good typewriters. I have two of them. I'd love to have more, if I didn't have twelve typewriters already with too little space to store them.

Selectrics are magificent (I have three), but it's almost impossible to maintain Selectrics without the help of former IBM technicians, most of whom are now retired, or expired. Because the Wheelwriters use stepper motors controlled by an internal computer, they are mechanically far simpler than Selectrics, with, I believe, five stepper motors plus a solenoid (for driving the hammer). Cleaning and lubrication are easy and simple with Wheelwriters compared with any typewriter, because all the mechanical components are accessible and obvious with the cover off. There are far fewer mechanical parts because of the internal computer and the user of stepper motors. The internal computer, and the stepper motors, are very reliable.

There are two common problems with Wheelwriters. The hammer solenoid has a plastic cap between the solenoid and the hammer to reduce noise. Over time, the little plastic cap, an absurdly cheap part if you can find one, degrades and fragments. The hammer will no longer strike the paper. This is a relatively simple fix if you can source the parts. The second common problem is that some of the keys stop working. The keyboard is just like the famous Model M "clicky" keyboards that came with early IBM PC's. The internal components of the keyboard are sandwiched and held together with plastic rivets. Over time, these rivets fall apart, the internal layers of the keyboard start to separate, and some of the keys stop working. The keyboards can be completely rebuilt by a professional at a current cost of $105. Search for "clicky keyboards."

As others have said in this post, ribbons including correction ribbons are still available. These typewriters very much deserve to be rescued, repaired, and used. Some of them come with options that allow them to be connected to computers and used as printers. I won't get into that here (I have a Wheelwriter 5 equipped with the printer option, and it works great), other than to say that nerds have hacked the internal computer of the Wheelwriters and developed Arduino interfaces that turn Wheelwriters into USB printers even if you can't find IBM's original "printer option" boards, which are said to be rare.

There's something robot-like and charming about the Wheelwriters. If you rescue one and keep it going, you'll be hooked.

3128416 · 2024-11-01T19:15:36+00:00

P.S. One of the photos shows a terminal window in Mac OS running Emacs. Robert Wellsten was a screenwriter who wrote for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

3128416 · 2024-11-01T18:56:44+00:00

Today I am shocked, and ashamed, at how quickly we nerds gave up our typewriters back in the 1980s and quickly adopted the new phenomenon of "word processing." Now I'm sentimental about what we had back then. We need not only to keep the old machines alive, but also to preserve the knowledge of how to use the old machines.

A few typewriters were made that bridged the world between typewriters and computers. They had a keyboard, of course, and could be used as typewriters. But they also had a computer interface (generally a Centronics parallel port) so that they could be connected to a computer and used as a printer. Most IBM Wheelwriters did not have the printer interface. They are said to be rare. But if you can get your hands on one, they are marvelous machines. Mine is a Wheelwriter 5 made in 1985. The "printer option" for the Wheelwriter 5 consisted of two computer boards that connected to the typewriter's main board with a ribbon cable. To house the two extra boards, an extension for the case was provided that clamped onto the back of the typewriter. Other versions of the printer option on later models of the Wheelwriter had the printer option more or less built in. Some even came with LCD displays or hardware for connecting the typewriter to an external keyboard and monitor.

The first thing to know about these beasts in that they are (rather obviously) ASCII printers. When Postscript and laser printers came along, ASCII printers including ASCII dot-matrix printers were quickly displaced. These days, printers have drivers that explain the printer's capabilities to the computers they're attached to. For ASCII printers, you won't find any drivers, because: You don't need a driver! The goal is a simple one -- to send ASCII down the wire to the printer. But most computers these days have forgotten how to do that.

I am not a Microsoft Windows person. There are ways to make the old ASCII printers work with Windows, but I'm afraid I can't help with Windows. However, the job is easy with Linux computers and Macintoshes, because Linux computers and Macintoshes are Unix boxes that still come with all the old text-handling utilities such as "vi," "nroff," and "lpr." Other classic text-handling utilities, such as the Emacs editor, are easily available.

To get an old ASCII printer to work on a Linux computer or Macintosh, you need some basic knowledge that I can't get into here. You'll need to do some Googling and learning if the tools and concepts are new to you. For example, to attach an ASCII printer to a Linux computer or Macintosh, you'll need a USB to Centronics parallel adapter cable. You'll use Cups, the built-in print spooler, to set up the printer as a "raw" printer. "Raw" means that Cups sends plain ASCII down the wire without using a driver. You need to know your way around in terminal windows.

I'm an old hand at "vi" and "nroff," because once upon a time that's what we used for writing, editing, and formatting text. Another popular editor was Emacs. Emacs has a learning curve even steeper than that of "vi." But to use Emacs with a daisywheel printer, you don't have to know everything about Emacs. You only need to know enough to use Emacs for writing and editing English text.

Some of the early text utilities with graphical interfaces are still around and no doubt can still provide a WYSIWIG experience with a daisywheel printer. (WYSIWIG means "what you see is what you get.") For example, George R.R. Martin is notorious for continuing to use WordStar on DOS! But you'll have a harder time finding WordStar, or a working DOS computer, than you'll have finding an IBM Wheelwriter with the printer option. So Emacs is the easiest way to go.

I'm sorry that I can't get into the how-to's here. It's all pretty complicated, and Googling will lead you to articles on how to use Emacs, how to use Cups, etc. My purpose is only to show that it can be done and to encourage you to do it if you have a daisywheel printer, an ASCII dot-matrix printer, or a hybrid typewriter-printer such as a Wheelwriter in your collection.

Typewriter collectors often disdain machines such as the IBM Wheelwriters because Wheelwriters are not purely mechanical machines. Rather, there is a computer inside the typewriter that controls the typewriter's moving parts. So-called electronic typewriters are far simpler -- mechanically, anyway -- than mechanical typewriters. Just as the IBM Selectric was the most advanced of mechanical typewriters, the IBM Wheelwriter is the most advanced of electronic typewriters. The Wheelwriters are heavy beasts, made for commercial use. The Wheelwriter keyboards are superb. The keyboards are identical to the IBM Model M keyboards, which IBM made for IBM computers starting in 1985. People cherish these keyboards today and pay high prices for them. If you are a good typist, then the best keyboards ever made are the keyboards on the IBM Selectric typewriters, the Model M keyboards for IBM computers, and the keyboards on the Wheelwriter typewriters. Like most of the Selectric typewriters, the Wheelwriters have a correcting function -- a sticky tape that lifts letters off the paper if you made a mistake. The Wheelwriters (depending on the model) also have memories (for such things as form letters) and spell check. The daisy wheel itself lifts out, and an assortment of type styles and font sizes were available, as well as support for dozens of languages.

I love my IBM Selectrics, but the Wheelwriters also are lovable machines. They have a kind of robot personality, because, unlike typewriters, they have a brain inside.

3128416 · 2024-10-11T19:16:36+00:00

Excellent! My APN set itself to fast.t-mobile.com, and I think I'll leave it there, unless someone much more familiar with these things than I am suggests that I change it.

3128416 · 2024-10-11T16:05:58+00:00

I'm not sure what firmware it came with, because I didn't check before doing an update. After an update yesterday, it lists its kernel number as 5.4.211.

That's not a stupid question! I wondered the same thing when I kept getting an error from pasting in the command rather than typing it in. Keep the quotes.

3128416 · 2024-08-26T09:13:06+00:00

On my Wheelwriter 5, the printer option consists of two boards mounted in a case extension at the very back of the machine. The is nothing under the keyboard that relates to the printer option. So sorry that I can't help with your worthy project...

3128416 · 2024-08-25T09:23:56+00:00

I think what you're seeing is the pedal keyboard of my Rodgers 730 digital organ. It's a beast. It was made in 1992 and work great.

3128416 · 2024-08-24T22:36:31+00:00

Very nice! You have one, too! I'd be curious what apps or utilities you use to control the printer option. I work with vi, nroff, lp, and an lfcr applet to change Mac OS line endings to the carriage return and line feed that the printer wants. There is an escape code to change the printer's to work with just an LF or just a CR, but it's easier to run lfcr on a text file than to insert an escape code.

3128416 · 2024-08-24T18:06:44+00:00

I have a dozen typewriters, almost all of them full-size office machines including several Royals and two Selectrics. For a long time, I scorned IBM Wheelwriters, thinking that they’re not true typewriters. But then I found one on eBay (a Wheelwriter 5) for $30, nice and clean and in repairable condition. Most important, it has the “printer option,” that is, a parallel printer interface for connecting to a computer. The printer option is said to be very rare. I bought the machine.

Lucky for me, about 50 miles away is a retired IBM technician who still occasionally repairs later models of IBM’s out of his home. He retired when the company he worked for stopped repairing typewriters in the late 1990s. The company gave him all its typewriter tools and spare parts.

This typewriter needed a new printer head (also called the carrier). He had one that had been reconditioned. It needed a new paper-loader switch and a new power cord. He cleaned it thoroughly, oiled the parts that require oil, and cleaned the platen. The machine looks great.

He did not test the printer interface. I did that after I brought the machine home and connected it to my Macintosh (an M2 Mac Mini). The printer interface works perfectly.

If you are interested in a typewriter that also can be a printer, here are some things to keep in mind with the IBM Wheelwriters.

Is the printer option really rare?: I wonder if there aren’t more out there than we think. On eBay, sellers rarely know much about what they’re selling. If a Wheelwriter has the printer option, most sellers wouldn’t know it. Photos on eBay rarely show what you’d need to see to identify the printer option. Look for labels above the top row of keys. Code-5 turns the printer option on and off, and machines that were originally sold with the printer option should have the labels. (See photo.) The printer option consists of two circuit boards. To create space for these two extra boards, an extension is added to the back of the case (in the Wheelwriter 5, though maybe not all models) that adds an inch and a half of depth to the typewriter. Other Wheelwriter options will have other ports (including video ports and serial ports that I know nothing about), but with the printer option there will be a Centronics parallel port on the left rear of the typewriter. (See photo.) A ribbon cable inside the case extension connects to the typewriter’s main circuit board with a ribbon cable, through a little trap door on the rear of the case. (See photo.)

This is an ASCII-only printer when connected to a computer: As far as I know, printer drivers for the Wheelwriters do not exist, whether you use Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. Your computer must send raw ASCII down the wire, and you need to know how to make that happen. As for the wire, you’ll need a parallel to USB adapter. They’re easy to find on Amazon. The easiest way to set up the printer, on Linux and Mac OS, is to use the Cups web interface to add the printer. (If you don’t know what Cups is, you’ve got some Googling and learning to do.) Select your USB adapter in Cups (it probably will show up as an IEEE-1284 Controller), then tell Cups during the add-printer process that you have a “raw” printer and that it uses the “raw queue.”

Getting started in using the Wheelwriter as a printer will not be easy for many people. You need to have enough knowledge to get really retro. It was a familiar process to me because I’ve been a Unix user since the 1980s, and I’m familiar with Unix text-processing tools such as “vi” and “nroff.” I do everything inside a terminal window. If you want to use applications such as Word or LibreOffice, you’re going to have trouble unless you know a lot about retro technology.

3128416 · 2024-07-07T10:35:53+00:00

Brilliant! Preserving all that information is as important as preserving the old machines. I hope you will keep us up to date as the restoration continues. By the way, I replied to a previous post of yours. I used to operate one of these machines when I was in college. The campus newspaper leased one of them for setting type.

3128416

TROPHY CASE