I have around 50 original recordings in various quality on cassette. I have recorded most of these to PC using an onboard soundcard at 44khz with my hifi's built in dual cassette deck. The results are not bad. Recently I bought a new pc, and along with it a really nice soundcard that can record at 96khz. So I'm now looking to re-record all my old tapes. Problem is, I don't have the money to go and buy one of the top-of-the-range Nakamichi machines from the '80s, and I couldn't really justify spending that money anyways as I only want to record those tapes n then I'll never use it again. Is there anywhere where I could perhaps rent a cassette deck? Or would it maybe be worth my while to buy one, then re-sell it when I'm done? Which would be the best deck for this purpose? Sorry to sound so naive, but that's what I am pretty much.

Also, how easy is it to tell with regards to Dolby noise reduction and things? There are a lot of different cassettes, recorded on a whole bunch of different tape recorders, a lot of them entirely unlabelled, and anyways back when they were recorded I just used to shove 'em in and push record. Are there machines that can automatically detect this?

So, sorry for the long post, and nagging questions, and thanks in advance for any help you may give!

Cheers,
Terry