I very much want to convert all the music in my audio tapes to digital format in my laptop & eventually store them in CDs. My laptop has only a microphone socket , no line-in socket. I tried to record by connecting the headphones socket on the cassette player to the mic socket on the laptop using a cable with stereo jacks at both ends, keeping the volume very low. It did not work. I would like to know the possible inexpensive solutions to this problem. What more should I buy, where will I get it & what will be the approx cost? I live in Chennai , India.
Thank you.

I very much want to convert all the music in my audio tapes to digital format in my laptop & eventually store them in CDs. My laptop has only a microphone socket , no line-in socket. I tried to record by connecting the headphones socket on the cassette player to the mic socket on the laptop using a cable with stereo jacks at both ends, keeping the volume very low. It did not work. I would like to know the possible inexpensive solutions to this problem. What more should I buy, where will I get it & what will be the approx cost? I live in Chennai , India.
Thank you.
Read what Scott posted and check out his suggestions:

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/multimedia/capture-audio-100302.html

Actually, you probably just need to turn down the INPUT volume on the computer. If you go to Control Panel, Sounds and Audio Devices, click the Audio tab, and tehn click the Volume button under the recording section, you should be able to turn the microphone volume down. I've done it for my parents, so they could convert a bunch of tapes to CD's, and it seemed to work pretty well.