How to copy cassette to CD


I have a CD burner in my PC.
I have a cassette deck.

I have some old cassettes that I would like to copy to CD without spemding a lot of money on something like that Alesis machine I have read about. These are not reference quality recordings so the quality of the recorder does not have to be the best but I would like a decent copy.

Any ideas how to accomplish this for less than a few hundred
dollars?
herman
I think many pieces of CD burner software have built in some facility to hook up a 1/4" mini plug compatible input source and do A to D conversion on it to a wav. The wav can then be written to CD. Check the back of your computer to see if there is a "Mic" input. What kind of CD burner software are you using?
I have accomplished this by recording through standard 1/8" mini-stereo plug into computer's sound card (line input) and using shareware (free) recording software Goldwave, available at goldwave.com. Just take the RCA's from your tapedeck or receiver/amp and buy a $3 radio shack plug from 2 RCA females to 1 stereo mini male.

What I did was record an entire side of the tape, then use Goldwave to split it into separate files for the songs, saving them as separate .wav files. Then burn with Easy CD Creator or Nero (which can also be used free for a month or two).

It will definitely not sound perfect, but it's free and you may be surprised at how good it sounds. I would definitely recommend trying this first and then spending extra money only if the sound is not good enough.
Wow!! This sounds complicated. Maybe just purchase a used Philips CDR 880 or other high quality stand alone burner and run directly into it with mini-plug and RCAs.
i'm with celtic, i found a philips cdr 950 new on ebay for 200. single well, it basically is my nac tape deck gone digital and blows the pants off my puter recordings...oh ya it does have analog in's and record level fer tweaking, i would'nt use it for playback, but a damm good deal for recording/burning... have a wonder filled day