I am attempting to digitize some old recordings I have on Vinyl LP and R to R tape.  I found some help on the web on how to record from record and tape players on the web but they all presume that my sound card has a LINE IN jack.  I have 2 desktop PCs and 2 laptop PCs all running WinXP but none have anything but the MIC and HEADPHONE jack as input / output to the sound card. Some web sites warn against using the MIC jack as input from a player device like a phone player while at least one other site says use it.  I am wondering if I will smoke my sound card if I attempt this.  Any thoughts on this?  Much thanks, Keith

I would check on your sound card manufacturer's web site as to acceptable uses for the input jack.
I wouldn't think that the signal level from a player would be high enough to damage your sound card.

Thanks for the response. Trying to follow your suggestion, I'm having difficulty determining my sound card's manufacturer. I checked device manager under SOUND but I'm not seeing anything that I can recognize (eg Soundblaster). My pull sheet on the laptop doesn't itemize the card......maybe it's intergrated on the motherboard (Dell). I'm liking your last statement that tells me that likely the signal level wouldn't be high enough to damage my sound card.  Perhaps what I'll do is test this using the MIC input on my laptop that still has the warranty!!  Thank you.

Replace your sound card with a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! sound card. It has AUDIO OUt, LINE IN, MIKE, SPKRS(2) and REAR SPKRS jacks. I've been using it for years to record LPs and tape cassetts using Roxio Easy Media Creator.

Thanks for the info on the upgraded soundcard. I have since tried recordings using the MIC jack on my latop. While it did NOT blow the card, the resulting recording is distorted and unusable. I ended up using my son's iMAC and a software product called Soundtrack Pro.  After you capture the recording via the iMac's LINE IN jack, you can adjust the recording's digital attributes with the tool's software mixer rendering very good sound quality.  I then just save that file as with the AFF extension and copy it to my shared disk on the network.  From there I can import it into iTunes and convert it to MP3.  The only negative on the iMac is that I had to move the computer near my stero sound equipment to get the input cord to reach.  Laptop would have been better if I could upgrade the soundcard.