I'm also willing to help, if it's still possible.

I'm still hoping these tapes have not been 'lost' forever. Many have shown interest in their preservation.

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~ Life's short; make fun of it.
User ID: 39750; SETI@home member since: 5 May 1999; Classic workunits: 5,851; Classic CPU time: 108,169 hours

If the drives still exist - I am willing to work on preserving the data if possible

Only 420 lightyears?

O.M.G. , that really is NOT too far into space around our sun (Sol) - considering the size of Milky Way galaxy and the distance of the nearest (*GIANT*) Andromeda galaxy.

Was the Smithsonian Institution considered a possible recipient and curator of this landmark in world (and US) science?

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The 'landmark' was in the software developed in Berkeley and how the team ran this project for two decades with few funding; not the off-the-shelf hardware of a couple mid-size Sun Enterprise servers. So it's difficult for any science museum to present old ordinary computers in order to educate future generations about SETI@home, distributed computing, or citizen science.

[EDIT to add:] It might be different with an old dusty SPARCstation, its original CRT monitor (with still sticking historic post-it notes) and worn keyboard on which the SETI@home founders developed the SETI@home code.

E.g., the CERN in Geneva still preserves the NeXTcube workplace which was used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to develop the world's first web server and web browser.