[William Sommerwerck]

I recently pulled out commercial open-reel tapes that were at least 35
years
old. All but one were in perfect or close-to-perfect condition.
(Amazingly,
I'd bought a second copy of that recording some years back, so I had
a good spare.) I will eventually dub them to 8mm DAT -- unless I can find
a "reasonably" priced four-channel recording system for my computer.
(8mm DAT is not exactly robust.)
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I wouldn't do that if I were you, Bill. DAT is really flakey; I did some
archival restoration a few years ago, and we wound up using 6 different
DAT machines (including two $7000 Sony PCM-7040's) to play back
tapes made from 1990-1998. DAT is a very, very impermanent medium.

Don't misunderstand -- I'm not going to get rid of the originals. No way.


BTW, DAT is only 3.8mm, not 8mm.

I'm talking about machines that use 8mm video tape. They are, strictly
speaking, DAT.

If I can find a good A/D system, for a reasonable price, I will most
certainly use it.