Bypassing Snow Leopard.

[Fusionskies]

Hi,

With the lockdown going on, I've been trying to stay productive, and decided to get around to finally building my home office for my small business. I have an old iMac lying around, and its more than capable to do the work I need to do, only problem is its running Mac OS Leopard, and its too old to really download anything useful, and even browsing the web is hard due to the old plugins.

Is there any to skip Snow Leopard? is there a way to complete erase leopard, and trick the system into asking for any compatible copy of Mac OS, where I can then go about installing Lion, (or Yosemite, which is the highest an 08 iMac can take)... For now, getting to Lion will be a milestone enough.

Thanks.

 

[Fusionskies]

Update, found a way to jump system in case anyone comes across this thread in the future and needs help.
I jumped straight to Yosemite from Leopard by making a Yosemite bootable USB, following this tutorial.

Alt on restart, selected usb as drive, and wiped my Mac's HDD clean, no other way to do it as far as I am aware, you need to remove Leopard in full.

Took a while to install, it did appear to be stuck a few times, but patience is the key.

Now running Yosemite, very happy

 

[DeltaMac]

You said that you have a 2008 iMac?
That would support El Capitan, should you choose to upgrade to that.
Even a mid-2007 iMac can go to El Capitan!

Of course, you would want to upgrade to at least 4GB of RAM (6GB is max), and consider the ultimate upgrade to an SSD. It's not a difficult task on an early aluminum iMac.

 

[Fusionskies]

You said that you have a 2008 iMac?
That would support El Capitan, should you choose to upgrade to that.
Even a mid-2007 iMac can go to El Capitan!

Of course, you would want to upgrade to at least 4GB of RAM (6GB is max), and consider the ultimate upgrade to an SSD. It's not a difficult task on an early aluminum iMac.

When I upgraded to Yosemite, I tried to install Pages, and got the message that it required El Captain.
So thinking that I might as well, I decided to upgrade.

There was an issue with the installer for some reason, and it wouldn't install, (and stuck itself in an annoying boot loop).
It was very frustrating, but I managed to exit the installer thinking I would have to once again erase and install, but luckily I managed to get back into Yosemite without losing data. Since learnt my lesson and now I have time machine hooked up.
Wont be installing El Captain for a while after the pain it gave me...

As for the RAM, I actually upgraded years ago when it was my main Mac, so its currently running on 4GB, but I don't think my early 08' iMac can take 6GB, correct me if I am wrong.
Maybe eventually I will install an SSD, right now its not to shabby in terms of speed. Its mainly being used for Numbers, browsing and printing.