Thank you so much Mike and Charles for responding. My Christmas gift
came when, last night at 1AM (Too many sweets during the day
yesterday), I got the first patch back into the instrument via midi.
I can't begin to explain why, but my individual patches that had been
saved previously using Sound Quest can be opened by Midi Ox as
an "other binary" file. When opened this way, the sysx patch data is
approximately 200+ bytes instead of the 60 byte patches I get when
saving using Midi Ox alone. Anyway, my OB-8 accepts the Sound Quest
200 byte patches in whatever form that Midi Ox opens and sends them
as. Wish I knew more about the format and code stuff. I have no
idea why the patches saved using Sound Quest can't be sent back to
the instrument also using Sound Quest, but that's another adventure
and lots of experimentation. For now, I'm just thrilled to have my
patches back.

As for the cassette method, I have the orginal factory cassette,
plus .wav files. I've tried all different volume levels using
headphone outs of cassette player and laptop, plus variety of mini
pin cables from cheap ones to very expensive. The one and only time
I got any indication of the instrument recognizing the incoming data
was when the transmission failed and wiped out my patches.

Sincerely,

Mike Huggs