This comment is only to blow some steam, and perhaps forewarn some one else not to fall on the same trap my stupidity took me.

I was playing with VMware running Sice. Actually, 2 VMwares simutaneously

I do not know if you have noticed, but when you run Sice in the real CPU, the fan seems to rev-up

this protection reflex does not happen in VMware, but apparently the CPU usage and the heat production is heavy.

My computer turned itself off the first time, I thought it was some BSOD kinda situation, and pursued to do dual debugging, until the puter emmited a gut wrenching screamin' sound and stopped working

The CPU burned, smoked, kaput. RIP It melt the casing!

The nail in the coffin was me using Sice in the host system to figure out what was going on. . .

200 dollars later and monitoring the new CPU with a temp reading app confirms my warning
Same as oveclocking and xtreme gaming
RCE is stressful to your machine and dangerous to our wallet.
be kind to your MotherBoard

I wanna fry my processor and MB.
Thanks for the tip .

That does suck that you fried yer rig.
My prayers are with you as you go through this difficult time .

Woodmann

I always new there was a reason I don't run VMWare or SICE - even after countless recommendations to do so - but then again the case has been open on my machine since about a month after I got it, maybe it would work ---- and then there are all those ads in CPU magazine - maybe water cooling??? - anyway like Woodmann said I FEEL YOUR PAIN!


SiGiNT

Your cooling must've been insufficient to begin with... a properly designed "thermal solution" should keep the processor cool even when under maximum load for an indefinite amount of time.

There are programs specifically designed to heat the CPU as much as possible e.g. SuperPi, Prime95 - one of the best tests to see if your cooling is good is to run one such a program for a few days and monitor temperatures. What is done is basically set the CPU into a continous loop.

My 4.17GHz P4 rises to ~60°C and stays at that temperature indefinitely, so my cooling should be alright. A huge heatsink with two fans works very well.

Also, don't forget to clean all the dust out of the machine once in a while!

Sure Litana, I have been looking into thermal solutions. So far the most atractive is to move to the south Pole and only work the computer in winter times, outside.

The liquid Nitrogen Option, while attractve and effective is not very viable when you share your space with small children and pets.

On a more serious note, I read the MB info and it has BIOS controlled varible speed in the fans, it would alarm at temps above 75 centigrade and auto shut off at 90. it also shuts off if any of the fans fail.

I wonder if me, by tracing the BIOS (That is what I was doing with Sice) messed these self preservation mechanisms and started the nuclear reaction.

Anyway, the mantra that you cannot damage hardware using only software is false.

Right, you were able to burn monitors playing with its timing internals from software.
The smart cooling fan ('twas made to reduce noise) has usually a timed rate, so -probably- those timing went down when you traced in SICE, leaving the fan to a lower, insufficient rpm.
A simple solution is to disable the bios smart-fan system. Your fan will then runn at max rpm forever (just buy a +$5 fan with lower dB noise and you are ok).
Sorry for what happened, not nice (I still remember when I burnt the ehm... 80387... and those plastic stink all over the room...)

Wow, amazing. Emulation does indeed tax the system. Turning my PC into a reved up Amiga just about doubles the wattage consumed. I haven't done a wattage mesurment on VMware but it does get the fan going at times--I gave it a lower thread priorty when the noise started to annoy me. And softice suspends time and space and operation system niceties such as acpi--no more power control on a cpu instensive process like Vmware running softice and boom. I'm impressed with this. Not that I'm going to try it anytime soon. I got into the virtual networking possibilities of Vmware and kind of forgot about getting softice to work with it. When I control D softice the fan gets going(no acpi processer throtle) and the clock stops(system time tick suspended) and after awhile the system time is way off. If you're tracing a bios funtion I don't think that funtion will do it's normal job while you're tracing it--like the bios normally every 10ms or so might check the CPU temp but if you are tracing into the bios maybe it doesen't either receive the timing tick that tells it it's time to check the CPU temp or you are tracing that funtion in human time which is so much slower than CPU and bios time that by the time you trace to where the fan is turned on it's a few trillion microseconds way to late to save the CPU. Just a few idle thoughts, anyway, of what might have happened.