Unlike today in the digital age, everyone should have a backup and in those days I used cassettes for my backups. I would get a new album and the first thing I did was make a tape and put the album up. Many of my albums were only played that 1 time.
Unfortunately I did not make a backup of that tape. That’s on me.
I am adamant about my backups today. Also have more than 1 backup.
--MD
Essential trick to keep vinyl pristine, I always did this until I bored with a new album and the next came along
hammer the tape while the album stays current then the LP is still perfect for the odd play
i still have my old yamaha casette player in the attack + a box full of mixtapes lol
I should get them once…
now I just mix to flac direclty 
Adaptec 2940, I remember that! Ugh. I guess things have gotten better over the years.
Now if Apple could speed up their crappy implementation of smb…
Whilst things have definitely improved in the years since and I would never a SCSI or a SAS drive system these days (SATA iii is more than good enough and considerably cheaper), I never had any issues with the 1522 or 2940W when used for disks and cd disk reader/writers. Scanners, however, we’re a different kettle of fish once out of their support period.
By contrast, when I first bought the Adaptec 1522 in the early to mid 1990s to drive the disks that I acquired from work with Windows NT4 (on a 66MHz 486DX with 4MByte of DRAM), I was initially persuaded, by the dealer, to purchase a BusLogic card with similar performance and features. That card was a nightmare and never worked. Eventually, after quite a bit of to and fro, the dealer replaced the BusLogic card with the Adaptec and all my issues disappeared.
Guys, let go the past and seize the future! I am 75 and totally understand the Woodstock nostalgia.
Old tapes are more likely to damage even Nakamichi tank so what’s the point..
I still have all my mix tapes from the 80s. And my 2 decks. One had all the belts turn to mush but the other still works. On sound quality…something slightly above FM radio play maybe?
worth digitizing for nostalgia.
I remember those Cheetah drives 
I lost tapes and my 2 Nakamichi’s 20 yrs ago BUT I can dream 
I agree the state of my tapes now would be literally flakey. Once the CD came that was it for me. Moving to South Africa 30 yrs ago there wasn’t room for my vinyl so that went as well.
I now have zero media , Books, CD, LP or DVD just a bunch of hard drives
Minimalist to the end 
I gave up cassette as soon as I had some form of digital encoding and playback.
However, my brain still remembers some of the track orders of my favourite mix tapes so after “A Forest” it expects “Going Underground” and has a little stutter when it doesn’t arrive.
My kids taped over my favorite mix tapes in the early 2000s - a fact that I only found out when I put one of them on in my car (I have a 98 BMW with a cassette deck) and got blasted by early 2000s pop rather than mid 80s goth
Death is too good for them