Hi guys,
I am able to record sounds through my mic BUT OCCASIONALLY, but most often there is no sound and I can't record my words at skype's echo123. I have kdeTV and I assume it has something to do with this problem. I check all the channels, capture mute, mic enabled, mic boost enabled, mic level, line in -mute - NOTHING. Alsa mixer. But OCCASIONALLY I can talk with my daughter over the net, now we've got a joke - on even dates only! I will apreciate your suggested solutions.
I am thankful that you are there to help, problems seem not so hopeless with having this opportunity to share them with you!

I did find a bug in Skype for my hardware where I could only talk to one person on Skype, then the next person could not hear me. When I killed Skype and restarted it I could then make another call.

Not sure if it's the same bug you're having, but just a thought. In Skype, check the audio is set to ALSA or OSS, depending on which one you use. It does make a difference.

Thank you, ArC KaNe, I found a similar bug, but it's not connected with skype, I think. I have a PCI TV tuner card/Bt878 Video Capture and the line input somehow interferes with mic. I check if there is mic output with a voice recording program. No recording, nothing on skype test call. I check and uncheck, up and down all the channels - nothing. And then a sequence worked out. First I try to record with LINE output enabled, the result is some noise, and theeen! - MIC output - there it goes! I guess the line channel somehow gags the mic (when the mic is enabled but still can't record my voice but noise from line only, when I STICK my ear on the front speakers I am able to catch some words!!!). So I found this sequence totally empirically (I am a PERFECT beginner at Linux /Ubuntu (three-week). Skype works only with OSS. With Alsa it is dumb as an oyster.

I do not read the hardware info well but this is what I know about my system
AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+
nVidia GeForce 6100 nForce 405
K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
512MB Ram
80GB HDD

Thank you very much.