N00b needs old cassette help badly!

I was over at my moms place housesitting and feeding the cats when I was poking around the closet and found a HUGE box of tapes. See, my mom - she didnt film everything back in the 70's, but the tape recorder never left her side for most of a decade. Christmas '77, me watching the holiday special in 79, stuff in the 80's - she taped it all.

Since I was unable to hook up with her for her birthday earlier this month, I figured that I would make up for it a bit and dump all these tapes to a digital format and burn 'em to CD for her. The problem is - I have no idea where to begin. No tape recorder, so recording software, no cable hookup - not a blessed thing.

I know my sound card has audio input that works - I've dumped a bunch of old video tapes of mine from the 80's onto my hard drive, so that's not a problem. I just need some software that can record MP3s and/or WAV from that input.

I need some names for good (yet cheap) tape recorders, something with a mini plug output (or whatever format would work best for this job: RCA, Mini, whatever). I say cheap because beyond this one usage, I dont really see me needing one again - so the more disposable, the better.

Any suggestions towards these two items (and any general pointers you may have in the process) would be great help!

 

I'm thinking Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ would be the cheapest way to go-- it's free and have a downloadable MP3 converter if you want to go the MP3 route. Cheap tape decks, check Wal-Mart or Target they usually have $5 to $10 walkman type players that'll do for something like this; $20 bucks for a bigger "desktop" model.

 

Get goldwave or audacity. They're great for basic recording, and linear editing.

For a deck, use a brand new walkman (for don't want it eating your precious tape). Try to find one that has a setting for the type of tape.