Same. Back then we weren't booting off USB memory sticks: CDs it was. Knoppix and memtest to troubleshoot friends and family's PCs were my go-to tools. Always had a few bootable CD roms in the car. Heck I'd even take a HDD with me and wouldn't hesitate to open other people's PC and hook my "rescue HDD".

Worst memory ever troubleshooting a friend's PC was in the 386 or 486 days (didn't have Knoppix yet but was already on Slackware): he asked me to backup his files and I hooked one of my HDD as the main (as it was booting fine) and hooked my friend's HDD as a "slave" (that's how the terminology was back then). But I got sloppy and just let my friend's HDD sitting on the tower. Metallic PC tower. I turned the computer on, we heard an horrible noise and we saw a puff of smoke.

Old HDDs were kinda wild from that standpoint: much more exposed conductive parts than the later ones.

I just managed to short-circuit his HDD and it, nearly literally, went up in smoke. I was feeling really bad and gave him a HDD of mine. Oh well at least he had a working computer (but zero files of his).