well, i doubt the cable went bad after three years of fine service. I took it apart and checked all the connections. its glued to the drives and it was attached just fine to the board. i don't know what an ide header is, or if i would be able to check it. what i do know is that i can hear the drive spin up and then it tries to spin up a second time and it just cant so it shuts off and the player locks up. sometimes it just wont boot at all. i think one of the drives is going bad, but im not sure which... i just hope there is enough left in the little guy to do a clone to another unit...