major problems with serial cables Help Please!>?

[jmpmjmpm]

Hi people,
I seem to be having some major problems with serial cables which has left me totally confused???

Ok, I get me a copy of rolis 1.9 build 002 and a copy of Nokia tool asm-c by pro build 034.

Then I got a mbus/fbus cable for my 8210 which switches manually set it to m plugged it up to my win me system and proceded to unlock the phone, all worked well. Once. Every time since then I get check mbus cable messages all over the place. I get the same result using my xp system with userport running and without it running. After a lot of reading and searching I thought to my self, well something has happened that killed the cable or the phone.
But I also got autoswitching cables, one for my 8310 and one for my 6100 and have exactly the same problem well not exactly the same, the 6100 won't power on with the cable attached it goes to then switches itself off again unless the system (me or xp, two different comps by the way not dual boot) is a fresh boot then it switches on but the display goes faint and starts flickering (didn't go much further than that cos I felt a brown stain may appear on my pants at any time!).

The 8310 simply refuses to switch on at all when plugged up, if I lift the device a little so the power pins are connected but the m/fbus pins are not then it will power up I push the connector in then to make full contact and the phone stays on but can't be read 'check mbus cable'.

I have to be going wrong somewhere, i read that autoswitching cables are not liked by some software, so as suggested here somewhere I covered the fbus pins but still same problem (although I am not confident I did this properly) I can't have three faulty cables, besides the 8210 one did work once. I have to be doing something wrong. Oh and why do the 6100 and 8310 have sim holders in the cable?

Please, please help me quick!???