Invalid key length = what exactly?

Given the fact that this is the original 20GB hard drive for this mac (10+ years old), and this came on so sudden, is it reasonable to conclude that I should get a new HD and put this one out to pasture?

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Hard drives are a dime a dozen, and vary greatly in terms of lifespan. The Lacie 40 meg HD in my SE is still going strong after 23 years (this is the original drive, btw), as well as the Seagate ST-225N in my Apple SC20, which is about 25 years old. In contrast, the 320GB Hitachi Travelstar drive in my 6 month old MBP died about a month after receiving it (this was a replacement laptop from Apple). Although Hitachi drives are fairly reliable, this one was clearly a lemon. The one I have now (another Hitachi 320GB) works perfectly. So you can see where I am going with this.

Getting back to the G3, as an owner of a 2001 Graphite, the 60GB HD (which is the original, btw) makes a hell of a lot of noise, and sometimes fails to boot the OS (I have been contemplating that the System Folder is corrupt, however the loud noise and occasional "clunking" sound is a good indication that this drive is on its way out- not much of a loss since I have no documents/other personal information saved on that drive). I would recommend replacing the drive, not just because of the issues you have been having with the Finder, but because of all of the stress that the drive has gone through over the past decade due to extreme heat buildup (these CRT iMacs have a very poor convection cooling system- even the Bondi blues with the built-in fan do a lousy job in keeping the unit adequately cool). For a replacement HD, I would recommend a 5400 RPM drive either from Western Digital (Seagate, I hear, is pretty lousy nowadays), or from Hitachi. Or simply get an external USB drive, and boot the OS from there, which will eliminate the problem of removing the HD from the iMac.

Just my $0.02

Yeah, I figured as much. Thanks for the confirmation.

Interesting enough, when I pulled the drive (I edited my post with the specs) it was only slightly warm. I'm not sure the HD gets terribly hot in these things. The drive bracket is under the CRT, and the heat rises. I bought this iMac from Mike Richardson's store, and he told me most of his iMacs came from schools. Some snotnose kid also damaged the internal speakers so that they buzz a lot. I need to get replacements. Other than that, it's been pretty reliable.

I found two possible replacements. A 120GB Seagate U Series 9 (7200), and a 120GB Maxtor Diamondmax (5400).

Both are refurbs available from Operator Headgap for $50 shipped. The owner swears that the a 7200 drive will be fine because they "run cool." The IDE controllers in these macs can also take up to 128GB just fine.

Thoughts?

The owner swears that the a 7200 drive will be fine because they "run cool."

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The owner's statement is somewhat valid, as newer 7200 HDs made in the past couple of years do run cooler than their predecessors from the 90s/early 2000s. There are a couple of threads on other forums where people claimed to have installed 7200 RPM drives in their CRT iMacs, and have had no issues with overheating thus far.

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=523863

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=78132

http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1903359&tstart=105

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=57824

Regardless, I would just play it safe, and stick with the 5400. The components in these iMacs are already fragile enough.

Running a 7200 RPM HDD is fine. The 80 and 120 that were being used in an SL iMac here are still running ok(the 120 is the only samsung drive in the house still alive, the other three in various other cooler machines died premature deaths). The iMac is toast, but then so is another one that only ever was stock. That iMac was on 24/7 for 8-9 years and was regularly doing some reasonably heavy work until the mid point of it's life, not sure about the stock one though.

There is no way to preserve an iMac without leaving it off most of the time. It just does not work. You are better off replacing the bulging caps on the PAV and replacing the CRT when it gets burnt than trying to 'save' it with a 5400RPM drive.

Optionally undervolt a few small fans and arrange them around the handle inside the case blowing out. The reduced voltage will keep noise low but still move more air than with no fans.

You are better off replacing the bulging caps on the PAV and replacing the CRT when it gets burnt

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That must be a real pain in the ass to replace those components. Has anyone here ever attempted that? I ask since my Graphite's screen has severe burn-in after a decade of intense use from the admin down at the ICT.

Has anyone here ever attempted that? I ask since my Graphite's screen has severe burn-in after a decade of intense use from the admin down at the ICT.

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iMacs are not really worth the trouble unless you *really* love it. And if you really love it make sure it's internal plastic is in good shape(or you can source a good part) before spending the time.
Also be careful with the headphone jacks on the front, apple mounted them stupid and you can damage the traces leading too (right beside) the solder joints with extreme use.(or retards abusing them)

iMacs are not really worth the trouble unless you *really* love it.

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It sounds like these old CRT iMacs are going to be long forgotten in the next decade, or so, since no one seems to be motivated enough to replace any of the major failing components (hard drives, and RAM upgrades aside). I guess this will be a significant upside for those that own a "pristine" condition iMac, as the value of their unit is surely going to increase.

make sure it's internal plastic is in good shape(or you can source a good part) before spending the time.

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The plastics on my Graphite are ok, although there has been some cracking on the white strip (which is located inside the unit) due to heat. I documented this on a thread back in October, so all of the details/pics are posted there.

I wonder if the eMacs are easier to work on. They surely look, and feel more durable than their G3 predecessors.

I have a fairly decent example of a snow 600 that I stuck a ruby case on(both snow and ruby picked up from a school a couple years ago). >_> It was mostly because I could, I do not actually do anything with it. I am tempted to stick an LCD into it for the lulz but it would still be too slow and limited for nice OS X or OS 9 use.(this is in comparison to my PMG4 for OS X and Beige G3 for OS 9, both upgraded with nice things including AT and ATX cases :rambo: ) It would be nice if Apple made 'Ruby' and 'Grape' DA&QS cases. That would be cool. (but then I would be restricted to using a limited cramped apple case. :/ I just cannot win.)

Working in iMacs and eMacs is not hard it can just get annoying having to take the whole damn thing apart to get at a small part that should have been designed to come out more easily.

However, pickup a service manual and you are set if you have some time.

There will always be people who want to refit iMacs as well. If in 10-20 years time I wanted a G3 Mac I would go for a PowerMac 100% of the time. But I guess that is just me.

When the PAV board or flyback transformer on this thing finally goes, I will probably pull all the useful parts and junk it. There are rather detailed instructions on the net on how to fix the CRT-related parts, but it seems like more of a problem then it's worth. Mine is in reasonable condition, but it has some scratches I'd like to polish out. Plus I broke the (plastic) front clips that help guide the bottom on. This seems fairly common, and they are fortunately hidden. Some people seem to have the magic touch when it comes to disassembling these things. I am pretty ham fisted I guess.

BTW, funny you should mention Samsung... I just bought a used Samsung Spinpoint P80 last night. 7200 rpm, and 120GB. $35 shipped. Some casual research shows that these were excellent drives for their day in terms of reliability, noise, and heat (18.9 degrees C). Should also see a performance boost over the 5400 rpm Seagate.

These days, just about every HDD manufacturer has issues with drives.

they are all scaling back on the amount of metals they use and materials, at the same time, going up in density, to keep overall cost down.

also means reliability goes poofer.

Agreed. They don't quite make 'em like they used to unless you want super expensive (relative to consumer grade) drives designed for server use.

Some of the best drives I had were old, small, and slow designs made by companies that don't even exist anymore under their original names. Remember Connor? Or Shugart?

One of the best was an 850MB WD Cavair I owned. It only was 4400 RPM and high profile, but it kept going, and going, and going... It doesn't surprise me in the least that a lot of late 80s and early 90s Mac HDDs are still going strong.

Somebody told me that if you can get 3-5 years out of a modern HDD you should consider yourself lucky. Bleah. That crap would *NOT* fly back when HDDs were super expensive. Screw SATA. How about we return to reliability?

not if CHINA has a sayso in it.

not if CHINA has a sayso in it.

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Agreed. The days of "Made in the USA" or "Made in Japan" are long gone. Nobody cares about quality (only cost), and then you have consumers complain 2 or 3 years down the road (or sooner) why their product malfunctions all the time, etc.

Some people have made the transition to SSD drives. Although I've only had two traditional platter drives go bust on me since I started computing over a decade ago (a Jasmine Direct 80 drive in 2009, and that Hitachi 320GB drive last year), I would ultimately like to make the transition to SSD, as I too am not impressed with the quality of traditional hard drives manufactured today. A hard drive one of the most important components in a computer, and as such should be manufactured properly. However, you have to look at the economics of production/distribution, as well as the devastating effects a not-prone-to-failure drive would have on the service industry to find your answer as to why things are assembled the way they are.

In regards to the China factor, not every product I've owned from China has been a dud. My Canon i560 bubblejet (which I had for 7 years) worked perfectly up until the print heads no longer functioned, and I couldn't justify the $50 plus tax replacement for the heads, considering the cost of the printer was $99 when purchased new in 2004. Then there's my Visioneer PaperPort VX scanner (also made in China), which is about 14 years old, and still scans documents with great precision. Maybe these were one of the few products that were actually manufactured properly, or I know how to maintain my products well beyond their production cycle.

Speaking of forgotten manufacturers- does anyone here remember Quantum? I haven't seen a new Quantum drive in about 6 years, so I am under the assumption they filed for bankruptcy, or merged with another manufacturer.

Quantum was bought out by Maxtor in the late 90s, or so. IBM also sold their disk drive division to Hitachi.

Quantum was pretty decent, although never a serious performer.

IBM was almost universally hated. Especially the Deathstars... err... Deskstars.

The Seagate I pulled out of my iMac says "Made in China." Go figure.

Quantum was bought out by Maxtor in the late 90s, or so. IBM also sold their disk drive division to Hitachi.

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Ah. Thanks for the clarification.

Quantum was pretty decent, although never a serious performer.

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I currently have three Quantum drives- a blank 80 meg ProDrive ELS model (with the Apple logo circa 1992), a 4GB drive for my G3 B&W tower, and another 4GB for my Win 98 tower. I need to check the model name for the other two, but they all still work (although the one for my G3 is finicky- sometimes it boots to the desktop - while other times I hear it stop when spinning up, and the computer hangs). All three were made in Japan.

The Seagate I pulled out of my iMac says "Made in China." Go figure.

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I'm not surprised by that in the least. But I haven't had any of my Seagate drives (both vintage & modern) fail on me yet, so I'm pretty grateful in that regard.

Quantum's engineering quality was fine. It was their marketing that was retarded. They would sell 4200 rpm drives as part of their "Fireball" line and it gave people the wrong impression.

BTW, the thought crossed my mind that I have a unshielded sub-woofer 4 feet from my Mac. Any possibility that could have something to do with this? It would have to be a pretty stong magnetic field... but I wonder. Only one partition got messed up, so I'm kinda doubtful. Hmmmmm...

as part of their "Fireball" line

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Yep, that's the name of the other two Quantum drives I own. I have version 3.5- if that's of any significance.

I have a unshielded sub-woofer 4 feet from my Mac.

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I would move it, as it is likely causing some sort of interference with your iMac. From what I have heard, the RF shield in these CRT iMacs are not that great. I dunno...the styling is there, but the engineering...well let's face it- the engineers were asleep when the iMac was in the production stage.

This may not be the best place for it, but "discussion about the state of storage technologies, reliability, and what you can do to protect your data" has been initiated.

Screw SATA. How about we return to reliability?

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That's called "SAS disks in an array" and it costs a LOT of money. Like, so much. HP sells 300GB SAS disks for $330, and newegg has a 500gb seagate SAS/6g disk listed for $124 but I suspect that that's near-line sas, or sata with a sas connector. Even if you trust that Seagate disk to be what it is, right next to a 146gb Lenovo SAS disk for a few bucks more, that's still a quarter the space of the 2TB sata disks I'm about to mention, for more money. (Not so much more in this case that you would purchase two SATA disks for the price of one SAS disk, but you could pretty easily buy three of the SATA disks for the cost of three of those SAS disks and have like four times the storage available in your three-disk RAID 5 setup.)

Reasonably performing 2TB sata disks cost $120 each and every single modern PC can take two of them and mirror them and a utility like Acronis Drive Monitor can tell me when to replace one or both. (ADM is free and runs on Windows XP or newer. If you have a Windows PC and aren't already monitoring disk health, please download it.)

For this amount of money you might get a single SAS disk. (like that 300GB HP sas disk, I am pretty sure that the Seagate one is not actually SAS)

... That and solid state drives. SSDs had a bad rep for awhile but since like 2008, the newest SSDs around (even the budget ones) are capable of pretty much running 24/7, rewriting the whole drive constantly (or at least ten times per day) for like fifty or so years before they'd actually die.

Realistically, SATA and new sata-compatible drives are probably going to be around for quite awhile, and I can get huge, massive amounts of storage for relatively low prices. In light of this, it does not really bother me that much that a few of my disks will die each year, especially given that all of my data lives on modern systems that either have OSs with backup tools built in (Leopard+, Vista+) or have some of the inexpensive backup tools available. (I prefer Acronis TrueImage on my Windows systems, works great for XP and newer, and the boot CD works well for any Windows machine that can boot from CDs.)

The question that I see it as is "for any given unit of storage, would you rather pay huge sums up front for something "quality" that might last a long time, or would you rather pay so little that you can justify getting two or three to run in a raid1 or raid5 fashion or so you can justify buying and using some other backup media?

One final note about disks and "quality" and "longevity" is that hard disks have always been inordinately delicate, annoying little devices, and always the technology we use to build them is getting better. It may seem like an unreasonable proposition to buy a 1tb or 2tb disk, but it's so inexpensive right now. When I had my first "new" computer, an Athlon 700 back in the year 2000, it would have been quite a lot of money to get a second disk in there, so I more or less just blindly trusted that the machine wouldn't go bottom-up, or that if I had any data that was important, ht would fit on zip100 or floppy diskettes, and that my [relatively] early CD-R disks wouldn't die.

These days, I, a university student with a fairly modest job, can afford not only to keep all of my digital life handy, and more or less never have to delete anything, but I can afford to back it up on other spinning hard disks or onto little pieces of solid state flash media, or onto the newest/fanciest optical media.

And this capability can be fairly reasonably added to any Mac or PC with USB and/or PCI slots that also happens to run a fairly modern OS. (So I'd say 2002 or later, but that's mainly for the bluray bit.)

If your data is important, there's no very good reason not to be treating it like it is.

... All of that having been said, hopefully the new disk for that iMac works well.

Also just a quick note about iMacs: The G3 iMacs pretty much can't have been productive during their productive lifecycles and still in good condition, just due to pretty poor cooling systems. Most computer parts can withstand heat, but iMacs, as per my understanding, produced so much heat and had no real way to get rid of it, that these days any survivors are just a mess inside. It's a shame too because they can be seen as the revival of the AIO form factor and maybe more importantly, the revival of Apple. I wouldn't even mind having one around but you'd need to spec out one pretty well to make it useful enough just to run the Microsoft RDP client, which is [unfortunately?] the only way I'd probably want to run one -- as an access device for a Windows 7 VM on my server. (Although that would be a badass way to use one, or a lab of them, especially if you already had the lab and were like "let's get some Windows 7 up on in here!" -- just put RDP file shortcuts on the desktops. Although it would be so much more energy efficient to use some kind of modern thin client and an LCD display.)

produced so much heat and had no real way to get rid of it, that these days any survivors are just a mess inside.

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They do draw out some heat. If you were to touch the top of the so-called "carrying handle," you would feel an almost scalding sensation on your hand, or finger (heat is being dispersed through the top via holes in the carrying-handle). There are also convection air-holes at the bottom of the unit, so it's wise to keep it tilted upwards for more heat to dispense. Supposedly, the Bondi blues had a built-in cooling fan of some sort installed at the bottom, but from what I hear, these didn't do an adequate job of cooling the system, and were removed when the G3-series iMacs were introduced.

Again, this is another example of Jobs' engineering at its best. To hell with practicality- focus solely on design/elegance to woo customers/critics, and when the unit does fail (shortly after the warranty coverage has expired) force the customer to upgrade to a newer iMac, and dispose of the old one (as its too costly to have it inspected professionally, and a pain in the ass to repair manually).

In my opinion, the 5200+ series Macs had it right (for the most part, anyway). The logic board was easy to remove (simply remove two screws in the back, and carefully slide out the board) in order to perform necessary hardware upgrades without the fear of being zapped by the CRT, and it had an adequate cooling system to avoid extreme thermal expansion of the plastics to the point where they begin to crack upon years of stress.

The first-gen iMacs may be better looking than the old 5200 Power Macs, but they were poorly built, unfortunately.

Supposedly, the Bondi blues had a built-in cooling fan of some sort installed at the bottom, but from what I hear, these didn't do an adequate job of cooling the system, and were removed when the G3-series iMacs were introduced.

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Every tray loading iMac has a fan in it. That is Rev A-D, Bondi, Blueberry, Tangerine, Grape, Strawberry, Lime. It was a 90mm fan I think.. Just one size up from 80mm but if you have a round file(like the ones used to sharpen chainsaw blades by hand) you can make an 80mm fit as I recall.
You pull out the mobo chassis/carrier thingy and it is right there under the rear of the CRT. You can then take out two screws to remove it's cage. I cannot remember what sort of connector it uses though but I *think* I recall having to lop off an old one and attach it to the new fan.

Please note the direction that the fan pushes air in before replacing it with something else or even just removing it. (I have not reversed one myself, but would prefer to avoid it because it just seems like a bad idea.)

The biggest problems with the G3 iMacs are the PAV board and the internal plastics. Both are punished by the heat and tend to fail eventually in the case of the former, or become brittle in the case of the later (especially the slot loads). Some enterprising individuals might take the time to replace or repair the PAVs, but I would imagine G3 iMacs will become increasingly rare over time.

On the plus side, the logic boards are decent. I rarely hear of failure on that end, and G3s usually run pretty cool.

Every tray loading iMac has a fan in it.

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I'm aware of that. I just mention the Bondi blue as it was the original iMac model, which happened to have a built-in cooling fan. But yes, you are correct. All tray-loading Macs had the fan up until the G3 slot-loaders.

G3s usually run pretty cool.

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I haven't run into an issue with overheating yet, as I keep my Graphite adequately distanced from other items that may cause a cooling blockage in the convection setup (and it's located in a relatively cool area). But I'm sure someone here has managed to destroy their CRT iMac in that manner.

My iMac G3 overheated pretty badly earlier on in its life. The cooling wasn't obstructed, but the drive in it ran hot and the machine was positioned in direct sunlight for a lot of its life (being a former education system). It also had the usual wear and tear from school kids, coin in the optical drive, pins in the speakers, all that.

The PAV was toasted. System would power up but couldn't sustain a constant voltage to the Cathode Ray Tube, so it had this nice dimming and then suddenly over-brightening effect that got worse with age.

I ended up changing out the PAV Board, CRT, Hard Disk, Speakers, Internal Frame (which was baked and cracked) and Optical Drive. It's not actually the same iMac anymore, with only a few parts remaining from the original system, including the lower EM shield, the drive cage, the logic board, down converter and the Graphite plastics. Now some of the graphite plastics need to be replaced.

Bah. Time to let it go I think.

Strangely the Tray Loader iMac, which was known for heat issues even more than the Slot Loader, has always been a more solid machine in every case i've come across one. They do heat up, but I don't often see one with power issues, the cases are stronger, the plastics last longer. Drive mechanisms don't fail as often. The Slot Loader may have been a refinement of the original design (as Steve Jobs suggested) but it was a major step backward overall when it came to the engineering.

As for the OPs issue... I can almost guarantee that the hard disk was failing considering the sudden nature of the fault. Good move on opting for replacement.

I ended up changing out the PAV Board, CRT,

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How much did it cost to replace the CRT, or did you use a working CRT from a donor unit?

I'm debating whether I should liberate my Graphite by performing the necessary repairs (it works in its current state- but I am not impressed with the quality of the internal plastics). Regardless of whether I decide to go with it, I would still like to know how to swap/remove the CRT in the first-gen iMacs.

Ended up swapping the CRT/PAV out of a donor iMac. I didn't end up swapping the parts individually, I just removed the parts connected to the donor iMac's internal frame, leaving just the speakers, CRT, PAV and frame still attached, then built it up to completion with all the parts from the Graphite. Not sure how to change just the CRT, but i'd imagine it would require disassembling the system to the point of exposing the PAV board, removal of the PAV board (which requires discharging) and then the CRT assembly should be affixed to the face plate with 4 screws. That's just a guess though.

I remember back in the day people converting iMac logic boards into headless 1U rackmount servers.

Just a thought for people with dead CRT's who want to use the machine as a server or such.

(not that it would make financial sense with PPC Mac Mini's being so cheap)

I don't think financial sense has ever come into play on the 68k Macintosh Liberation Army. Wouldn't be as fun if it did. :lol: