My Compaq 610 only has Mic input and briefly tried using to record a mix in Audacity, no dice, levels super freaking hot and distorted to buggery

I've checked the Sound settings in the control panel and can't see anything that looks like it can be double functioned...any advise?

Small USB Soundcard the only way to go?

Cheers

What sound card has the 'puter got (sounds like an onboard chip yeh? but what type?) (Check this in device manager) Sometimes as well as the Control Panel levels there is a separate bunch of controls that come with the audio driver where you can configure what has been plugged in...

Pass...it's just the standard inbuilt sound card so fuck knows what/where the audio driver even is?!?

Anywho, a mate had an old Creatice Sound Blaster MP3+ soundcard which works a treat, except for now needing a third ground loop isolator as my laptop is a poorly earthed piece of shit

Glad you sussed a workaround, I won't baffle you with techno-babble any more! :-)
(But you could hover over the system tray... WHOOPS I mean the little icons down in the bottom right near the clock and see if any of them pop up names to do with sound...). Or not cos you fixed it anyway :-)

Short answer no.

Get a small recording box that will connect your AV cables into USB. Around 50 dollars (maybe even cheaper) I had a Numark one before i had my macbook.

Contemplating a small recording device as they're so handy being portable and keeps CPU resources free for the TORQ software to run without having Audacity clocking away at the same time...plus the noise issue, shitty Compaq

You can get away with it using one of these + cranking the gain. Not the best but it works.