Upgrading 8.6 to X

[AndyApp]

My dad is having some problems with his Mac and has asked me to try and help except I now nothing about Macs so thought someone else could help out.

He had the 8.6 version of the operating system and bought OSX which he was told would upgrade or install over or whatever no problem.

However now it has totally goosed his maching and he can't even switch it on, so he says. Someone has told him to take the harddrive out and put it in another machine to sort it out but this is a little beyond the scope of him I'm afriad.

Can anyone, in easy understandable never-used-a-mac-b4 terms, tell me if there is anything he can do? can't Macs boot from CD? Could he just put the old 8.6 disc in and boot from that? "Life is like a Ferrari, it goes to fast.
But that's ok, because you can't afford it anyway" - Jim Davis (Garfield)

 

[jimbopalmer]

Yes if you hold down the C key while booting, it will use the CD ROM as the boot device.

OSX is a unix variant, and is quite unlike any previous MacOS, which will not bother you as you are not used to the MacOS anyway, but may bewilder your father.

here is a list of which macs can use which OS, as a general rule if it is not supported in 9.2, it won't be supported on OSX.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25114

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.