I have two perfectly good radios of the same vintage sitting in my shop. When I got back into flying close to 2 years ago I went through the same issues. I found that I could narrow band them, but after learning the cost of narrow banding and new batteries I decided it wasn't worth it. You can buy a brand new 6 channel computer radio with all new batteries, and lots of great features, for not much more than those 15-20 year old radios cost when new.