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I hired a telecom/datacom contractor to give me a hand replacing it, and part of the fun was figuring out which cable coming into the computer room led to what gear. We got to the point of saying "Where does this lead?" "Dunno. Uplug it and see who yells." There were some incoming cables where we never did discover what they connected to.
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Oh my - you brought back the memories [hopefully NOT the nightmares]
As part of my current job, I inherited a network set-up done by group effort over the years. There was a huge UPS in the server room that hummed so loudly you could hear it throughout the ground floor. No one knew who installed it, or could identify any of the cables coming out of it. Not a single cable/wire was labelled, and there was no network map.
I decided to accomplish 2 jobs with one action -- get rid of the neolithic UPS and identify the cabling. How? Unplug the wires one by one and listen for the screams. Eventually I did identify the destination/source of all the visible cabling. And moved it off the UPS to a new, silent UPS.
THEN [drum roll], we shut down the UPS .... and listened for the screams. I was sure there were hidden wires inside the wall that came out from the back or under the UPS that we couldn't get to unless we pulled it completely off its mount. Oh my, yes, there were screams galore.
So, on Friday night, after business closed, we shut down the UPS and pulled it - it weighed more than a truck. And traced cables/wires into the wall ... I was astonished at the literal rats nest of cabling -- people piggy-backed new cabling on top of the old cabling - of course with NO identification. Just cut ends on the old stuff. We pulled out a veritable history of network wiring protocols and materials out of the walls. And rebuilt the wiring [with a map!].
Monday morning came the complaints .... they missed the old UPS hum -- it was too quiet now and people started being bothered by hearing stuff that had formerly been masked by the old UPS.
N.B. That was the largest lead acid battery I have ever encountered.