Re: I can imagine a coworker coming for someone's kneecaps
"Reminds me of the "magic switch" anecdote - if you're not familiar with it, it's a good read, like so much of the old computer lore!"
And I can totally believe it. I'm sure the explanation is the true one as a lot of SELV-level switches in those days were liable to short to the toggle and the case. It's a pity nobody checked after removal, though.
In the days before just about all serious production electronics had multilayer circuit boards, stray capacitance was a constant problem. I once encountered an issue with an industrial computer which had a peripheral which kept returning no data. We spent a couple of weeks trying to identify the software problem and eventually hired a very expensive, very fast storage scope. With which we discovered that a pulse on an adjacent but unrelated circuit board was causing a signal of about 1.5V for 20ns on a line on the peripheral that reset the output register. If this occurred between the register latching a value and being read, it cleared the register.
The solution was to replace the signal trace with the reset line with a piece of miniature coax. Later on I came across other boards where people had broken tracks and then run bits of wire wrap wire straight from one IC pin to another. While removing yourselves from my lawn, consider how much fun it was when solving apparent software problems sometimes required a LeCroy scope and a soldering iron.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
