Looking for the impossible!

Hook your tape deck to the "line-in" connector on the sound card on your PC using a RCA to mini-plug cable. Get Nero (or some other analog capture software) and digitize all of your tapes to MP3 or WMA format files. Then burn them onto a CD. It will take you a few months worth of work, but you'll have captured all of your music to a format that won't degrade further (like mag tapes do).

FWIW: I don't know many people that still have cassette tapes that they hadn't replaced with digital versions years ago.

You might be able to buy one on ebay. I went there and put in "gm cassette cd" and like 20 of them popped up. One of those oughta fit your Malibu. They're not Malibu specific, but then again GM doesn't produce radios just for ONE car. Usually they put the same radio across the entire GM lineup and across different model lines. My '99 Saturn SL1 just came with a am/fm radio. I bought an am/fm/cd unit off ebay for $45. I installed it in under 15 minutes. Just unscrewed a few screws, unhooked the antenna and wiring harness module, then hooked up the new radio. The Saturns do use a proprietory type radio, but the other GM cars use all the same radios.

I keep a lot of stuff on tape as a backup cassette as well as VHS except for those songs released on pressed CD in whatever compilation the publisher chooses to distribute.

I've heard lots of people say they've moved their libraries from tape, by burning them to CD. (and they've dumped their tapes). This could be a problem as burned CD's usually only have a life expectancy of 2 to 5 years depending upon which "expert" you listen to.

Here's a news release from PC World January 10, 2006 discussing the short life expectancy and reliablility problems with dye writtable media whether CD or DVD.

If you were to ask the manufacturer questions about the life expectancy (in writing) you will not receive a definitive answer.

This is just a short part of the article... you might wish to look it up for the entire content.

PC World January 10, 2006.

Opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime.

"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke says. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."

The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam.

"Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years," Gerecke says. "Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years."

Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, he says, because few vendors use life span as a selling point.

Similar Limitations (blah, blah, blah

Typically, high quality tapes last over 20 years and CDR's last 3 years. Both have problems. Keep the tapes dry and keep CDR's in the dark. Sun light quickly destroys CDR's.

You'll still have the music data on the hard drive. Just back it up periodically along with your other data. Re-burn the CDR when necessary.

jcr wrote in news:KbWdnZCNkuoY3mfZnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

It's easy to burn your favorite songs on a couple of CD-R's. I play 2 CD-R's about 90% of the time, unless I'm just lsitening to the radio.

Grapple,

For pre-2000 GM cars what you say is true, but nearly all the post-2000 model year GM cars use radios that are an integral part of the electronics of the car. For example, in most newer GM cars the radio produces your warning chimes, not a seperate chime module. This becomes real fun when you try an put another radio in the car. It has to be able to talk to the rest of the electronics in the car for both the radio AND the car itself to operate correctly.

Best advice I can give the original poster is to contact the Parts Department of the dealer you bought the car from and get the part number for the radio you want. THEN contact one of the Delco radio service centers and see if they have a "pull" or exchange radio of that part number available.

You can also contact one of the sellers on eBay that deals in OEM radios and is a service center such as M & R Electronics in Saginaw, MI

You can also find out the name/number of the nearest Delco service center from the parts dept:, since that same service center would be the one the dealer uses for warranty work.

Regards, Bill Bowen Sacramento, CA

grappletech wrote:

I used to do that but several years ago I got a 2gb DAT drive. Supposedly, the certified tapes are good for 30 years. (I'll believe that or not in 30 years.)

How many you want?? I went to

Eightupman