Reboot error

[AlwaysNeedsHelp]

I googled my problem and it landed me here but somehow the thread won't show up on this crap PC so please, don't flame me; I'm sensitive today.
*
Anyhow, because I'm an idiot, I was screwing with the harddrive and changed something from "read only" to "write/read". Today when I went to start it, it sent me right to the Darwin (how apropos, the name) screen. Before I sent myself into a panic, I googled and learned how to go into safe mode. But you can probably guess that it wouldn't even go into safe mode. Now I am in a full panic. I am getting a new Mac soon because that one is from 2006 so I wouldn't care so much but my mother passed in 2008 and I have a voicemail on there that was converted to MP3 and I don't want to lose it.

Some fun facts:
*It's a 2006 Mac (Tiger I think is the OS)
*Because I'm an idiot, I don't have the start up discs anymore.
*The CD/DVD rom is broke and I can't play CDs/DVDs which, obviously, I couldn't use the start up discs anyhow.


Someone please help.

 

[old-wiz]

When you get the new Mac you can also get a HDD enclosure and take the old HDD from your old Mac and put it in the enclosure and the new iMac can get the files for you.

As long as you haven't erased the file from the old Mac it's still there.

 

[AlwaysNeedsHelp]

Thank you so much! Will let you know when I try this.

 

[Guiyon]

Another alternative would be to just get a firewire cable, boot up the old Mac while holding down the 'T' key and connecting the two. The drives in the old Mac will show up on the desktop of the new Mac.

 

[AlwaysNeedsHelp]

And thank you! I'm going to try everything. I mean, if it needs to die, it needs to die, you know? That was an amazing computer for 5+ years. But I just don't want to lose certain things in the process because I'm too stupid to think ahead and backup.