I worked on AOL 5.0. It did crash machines with a specific softmodem driver. The bug was in the driver, we had to work around it after the gold master release. We didn't have that specific machine/driver in the QA lab, but the execs all had laptops that uncovered the behavior.
Literally if you just checked if the binary + config didn't break a windows machine before pushing to 100%.
There is definitely software erosion. Stores didn't sell CDs of software that just literally crashed your machine when you installed it.