Noone has answered the original question yet. And it's one I've been running in my head lately. I haven't seen any problems that would indicate a bad cable yet, but I wonder if mine could be from the bad batch. Doesn't empeg have some kind of record of which serial numbers received cables from the bad batch? If so, I'd like to know since I'll probably be cracking open my player in the near future to add a second drive and I would like to replace the cable at that time if it is a bad one. Is it possible to tell if the cable is bad by looking at it? Any special markings?