bad kernel fried motherboard???

[Robert Storey]

I've been offline for a few days because it seems my motherboard is fried. I'm 
sending this message from another machine.

The really WEIRD thing - I had just recompiled a Linux kernel, then rebooted, 
got a "kernel panic". Tried rebooting again into single-user mode, but kernel 
panic again. Next attempt to reboot into the old kernel, but this time 
nothing at all - no video, the motherboard just died.

My question - is there any possibility that a misconfigured kernel could harm 
the hardware? Or is it just a strange coincidence that "kernel panic" was 
followed by real hardware failure?

Sorry, I know this is off-topic, it was Linux not FreeBSD, but I'm still sort 
of dazed.

regards,
Robert