They are bastards like that. That has always been the case. I bought a 5300 back in 2002 that had stickers over the screws that allow you to open the keyboard!

Those parts are user-serviceable per the Apple documentation, so there is no possible way that they can enforce that restriction against the warranty. I say go ahead and make the changes you want to make. Besides, unless you do something to break it during the installation, if your Pismo is working fine now, it's not likely to physically break out of the blue in the next 60 days.

Peace,
Drew
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Power to the PowerPC!