So you seek the swiftness of the hare, though your Mac be a beige sloth? Step wisely, Grasshopper, for the path to speed is fraught with peril. It may sound like a bad fortune cookie, but you'd be wise to take this advice to heart: certain beige G3 Macs just aren't wired for upgrades. According to a Macworld article, if your beige G3 just happens to have a voltage regulator module made by Royal Technology, popping in a fast G3 or G4 ZIF upgrade could leave your new processor a crispy critter. Now don't panic, or anything-- those particular VRMs are just dandy when used with the factory-installed processor, but they aren't too bright when faced with a faster chip than the one that Apple shipped in the machine; they'll supply "far too much power" to your upgrade and fry it like a moth hitting a bug-zapper.

What's worse, there's no way to know whether your Mac is one of the affected models without popping the hood and poking around on the motherboard. At least the upgrade-frying VRMs are clearly labeled "ROYAL TECHNOLOGY," so a quick check should tell you at once whether you'd be buying your upgrade a one-way ticket to the Silicon Afterlife. Newer Technology has started shipping their ZIF upgrades with detailed warnings about this potential pitfall, and we expect that other upgrade manufacturers will soon follow suit. For the unlucky minority of end-users who have a Royal VRM instead of the more widely-used Raytheon part, apparently it's possible to replace the VRM with a model that will provide the correct amount of power to an upgraded processor.

Apple, of course, is adamant that this is neither a bug nor a "flaw" nor an "issue" with the affected beige G3s; since those particular Macs were never designed to be upgraded (and Apple never marketed them as such), we agree that the onus of solving this difficulty rests squarely on the shoulders of the upgrade sellers. Still, it's not hard for the overly-imaginative to consider that Apple pulled this stunt deliberately, in an early attempt to curtail the process of upgrading one's Mac. It's no secret that Apple's been anti-upgrade for years now-- probably ever since that legal flap about those "PowerPC-upgradeable" Performas several years back. Remember the Blue Blocker scandal? If you're the conspiracy-minded type, just think of this VRM thing as an early test-flight...