That’s not quite as ugly as a serial cable in a production dialup mail pick up box I found once. Someone was clearly missing a DB25-DB9 cable for the modem but had a DB9 shell floating around. They made a cable with some telephone wire, stripped the ends, folded them and rammed them into the DB25 connector holes on the modem. The other end was solder buckets and they did the same and crimped the thing. It worked. Until it didn’t. Then the modem and the cable had to be replaced because the connector was buggered.

This of course failed and I discovered the situation on Friday at 5:30pm just as the local Maplin had shut.