Originally Posted by windwalker

I too had this problem, the end that attaches to the brick that's on the notebook side. From what I can determine it's a matter of heat-the Damn cords get hot\warm enuff to soften the vinyl boot up. The first one I had completely seperated- I mean like feel apart in my hands-it's a wonder I wasn't shocked.
Bought a replacement($20.00 for JUST the cable) used it for about 3 weeks and now it's got a case of the wiggles. This time it seems that the male plug part is a tad bit smaller than the female part(isn't that always the case). So my power icon on my IBM A30p keeps flashing on-off, on-off. Too troublesome for me. The original adapter\cable was just slightly out of warranty. My 2 cents-another great marketing concept, doesn't work well in the long run, and it's been put on the shelf with a lot of other useless computer crap-like floppy disks