cant afford digital?
By the time you get a mixer, the recorder, all those cables... if you want effects you have to buy some boxes, plus some thing to mix down to... I just don't see how analog is any cheaper than digital, speking in the realm of DAW's.
..but, Tascam and Fostex used to make rackmountable casette four tracks. You could look for a used one. I had this old 3U 4 track made by ARIA, it was a cool unit, VU meters and all, but couldn't stand that it didn't have any noise reduction. had RCA ins and outs for the tracks. Most of those Portastudios have the ability to go directly out of the tracks, the mixer is there, but you can avoid using it. I do this with my 424, archiving and mixing old tracks into my DAW.
-jhe