cassette to digital

hi guys... i need your expertise in a small matter...

i have a handful of old audio cassettes that i need to treasure... i am hopeful that if i can convert them to digital format, and burn them onto a CD, i will be able to avoid the wear and tear of audio cassettes.... these are recordings from my relatives, who have since died... so they are not available "on line" on in the stores...

i have a SB-Live sound card, and have hooked a cassete player to the input jack of the SB...

questions...

(1) what software do you recommend to allow me to record the audio tracks onto the computer...

(2) what format should i save it on my computer?...

(3) if i want to be able to play these tracks on my stand-alone CD player, or in my car, what format do i use when i burn them onto a CD?..

please help... any and all help will be greatly appreciated....

thank you

Just get a rca to mimi adapter(best buy sells them).
Put the rca plugs on the out of your cassette player, and put the mini plug on your analog in. Use Creative Recorder and set the recoding from mode to analog in. Push play on the tape and then click on the record button of the creative recorder. It works great. I believe its stored by default in wav format, which will play on your cd player, but after its on your hard drive you can convert it to what ever you want.
Get a decent quality wire.

(1) Wavelab, Cool Edit Pro, Soundforge, and something to whipe out the noise from the waves u've recorder (steinberg clean for example)
(2) 16 bit 44.1 wave

(3) in nero create an AudioCD with those waves