Date   : Wed, 10 Apr 2019 19:16:35 +0000
From   : nicolagiacobbe@... (nicola giacobbe)
Subject: Preservation of Tapes

>
> Hi,
> how does the people here preserve the Old tapes? I still own
> an Acorn Electron and a large box of tapes i'd like to preserve.
>

Why not simply save on your computer as audio, maybe using the USB sampler
you were referring to?
This way you will save all the audio information and could later recover
the digital data if interested or re-play them on a real Electron/Beeb.
There are a few issues on the signal levels but nothing really bothering; 
if you want to go gold then you could build an high-impedance buffer to 
feed the audio sampler while at the sametime loading the program on the Electron,
so you will have an exact audio copy of a tape proven to be able to be loaded.
The tape bandwidth is about 11KHz so better sampling at 44.1Khz just to be sure.
Clearly, the best solution would be to digitize them (in case they aren't
already) but in the meanwhile...