Flat cable, 9-pin male/female ends, what's it for?

[GottaLottaStuff]

Found these in a bag of 9-pin to 25-pin adapters, gender changers, null modem adapters and such. Never seen these before.

 

[krebizfan]

I have seen similar cables for extending a serial port to the back panel. Most serial cards have the extra ports using bare rows of pins not a full 9pin D-shell. I can't remember which card had a DE-9 hidden on the inside but those cables mean you don't have to snake the data cable all through the computer to fit into the port.