Most of my cassettes have held up better than my cassette players.

A few years ago I was able to output from the cassette player directly into a computer with a Line In socket. I even have an older laptop which has a dedicated Line-In and using the program Audacity will capture and store various rates of WAV for later processing into cuts and formats.

Newer laptops may be a bit trickier but if they have even one socket they may allow you to turn it into a Line-Input.