I think you're underestimating how mechanical old hardware really was.

There's the classic story of "Walking Drives" from esr/jargonfile:

http://dictionary.die.net/walking%20drives

Or search for "washing" here for the story about huge DEC drives being ripped apart: http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_drives.shtml

Old hardware employed a lot of force, so "bad things" (TM) really could happen.