regebro, your geni-osity is showing again!
Of course, my friend, that's an A8, and I think everyone picked up on that fact, except the original lister.
The Otari never did anything for me. I see tons of those Otaris in the recording surplus stores down in Hollywood. They look like junk to me, but I suppose they were reputed as the high-end pro machines of their day. They still don't do anything for me, and I'd stick with Tascam, myself. YMMV.
I'd say the Tascam 38 or 388 is suficient for home recording. The 38 was originally marketed to the ambitious home recordist of the mid-80's, but the 388 was targeted at the small pro studio, or pro studio B-room/video-post-production environment, back in it's day. Today, the 388 is regarded as 'like any other Portastudio', but it's much more than that.
The Tascam 48/58/ATR-60-8 would each be much more high end in 1/2"-8-track than the 38 or 388, a cut above the home-recording realm, into real pro-oriented machines. These machines had more pro-oriented features, like XLR/BALANCED I/O, beefier transports, and higher [military quality] internal components.
The Tascam MS-16, 1'-16-track, would be a super-nice unit to have, [w/dbx units extra], & should be awesome in the home recording realm. That's a pro-level machine, there, alright. I'm sure it's worth the extra cost, and 16-tracks would often be more preferrable over 8-tracks, depending on the scope of your projects.