Protection Circuit while Converting Old Audio casettes CD

Hi friends, My dad just gave me a bunch of casettes to convert them to CD's, and I have no idea how to do it. i googled and found that walkman output could be given to the line in of the laptop. the question arises, whether we should connect the lines directly or have some protection circuits to prevent damage to both laptop and casette player?

I've connected a radio's headphone outlet to my PC's line in many times before without any problems. There's no need for any protection cirucits, all you need is a cable with a headphone jack at either end. Connect the Walkman to the PC, turn the volume on low and slowly increase so the peak waveform is just below clipping. If you use a decent sound recording problem you should be easily be able to see clipping.

For sound recording I would suggest audacity. Its simple to use but to export the songs as MP3's you need to download the Lame Encoder DLL.

No protection is needed to connect a radio to the PC/laptops Line In port