Capacitors don't always look bad on the outside when they crap out, though seeing smoke does narrow things down somewhat (but not entlrely). I had an early digital clock which suffered from one or more shorted filter capacitors; it worked for a few seconds when I first plugged it in, then the digits dimmed, and the fuse blew. Tried replacing the two filter capacitors (which looked perfectly normal from the outside), but the fuse kept blowing. Brought it to a friend of mine, and he discovered that some of the rectifier diodes had been taken out when the filter capacitor(s) had shorted. Once those were replaced, it no longer blew fuses (it still had issues, but that's another story).
As for belts, those generally don't cause copious amounts of smoke when they go bad, unless you're talking about a high-torque application like a vacuum cleaner. More often than not, if a belt in a disk drive or other electronic device goes bad, it either becomes too stretched out to allow for the device to work at the correct speed, or the rubber either breaks apart or turns into a nasty goo. I haven't had any belt issues so far with my numerous Commodore 1541 disk drives, though I suppose it's possible.
-Adam
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