Just checked a stack in the garage and yup, I've got a TASCAM PortaTwo which I was given by a customer, and which I never used. Why? Before that I had a TEAC 2340-SX SimulSync four-track reel-to-reel deck which I mixed through a TASCAM M-106 desk onto whatever cassette deck I had at the time. With an outboard Dolby AN-60 I could get up to 10 mono tracks with what was, up until the mid 1980s, acceptable noise levels. Got a bunch of material with great (well, to me) vocal harmony work, but no drums--which is why I got Band-In-A-Box in the first place.

I also have a Korg DDM-1 drum machine which was supposed to take the place of a drummer, but I still had to program it and dump sequences off onto cassette. What a pain. By the time I got the PortaTwo I had already embarked on my digital journey with BIAB v. 7 and Passport's Master Tracks Pro. It hass been another kind of struggle as I learn to work with audio in the digital domain, but it is an infinitely more elegant process. It's still not easy, but the results are fantastic compared to what I was able to produce on my own with tape. The journey has been a lot of fun--when not trying to pull my hair out because this or that doesn't behave as expected.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."