One day my computer starting rebooting all the time and it took me a day to track down the problem. Apparently my keyboard decided to turn against me... every time I hit the spacebar it would reboot the computer. I had to get a new keyboard of course... it's kinda hard to program without spaces. I kept it in case I wanted to play a joke on somebody.
I've had two CD's shatter inside CD drives but only the first one had to be replaced... I opened it up and slowly got all the pieces out but it still didn't work. The second CD disaster I did the same thing and the drive worked perfectly after all the shards of plastic were removed.
Back when we had LCD numbers to show mhz on computers I set the jumpers to what I thought would show 32 and turned on the power... some crackling and a puff of smoke later the LCD was dark... never to show anything again. I didn't bother replacing it since I wasn't selling the computer.
Once I was taking a spare HD to a friends to help him backup his drive before reformatting. I slipped on the porch and the drive flew out of my hand. After I got up I found it 4 feet away on the cement driveway. My first reaction to seeing it sitting on the cement "Well, that one is toast."... and it was. I grabbed another spare drive, walked slower this time, and finished the mission.
A few months ago a friend brought over three old computers of his to see if I knew anybody that would want to buy them. I plugged them in and after an hour of cleaning them up (removing spyware/viruses, updating windows) one of them started bellowing out smoke. I still have no idea why it became a chimney but it was the power supply. It's really hard to sell a computer that spontaneously catches on fire... even if you replace the cause of it.
There's more horror stories but that's all I can think of right now.
