Upgrade licence question

[ObiWayneKenobi]

Hello. I'm a relatively new Mac user. Work were recently throwing away an iMac G5 so I thought I would rescue it and set it up at home. Newer works iMacs are running Lion and as one recently broke beyond repair I thought I could installed the Snow Leopard disc that came with it then upgrade further using the Lion licence it had. However, Snow Leopard doesn't want to install, simply saying it cannot be installed on this Mac. Why is this? I believe this iMac can be upgraded (see spec below) given it has a new Intel chip, so is it a licence issue? I don't know how the discs/licences work so maybe I just can't use this particular disc, I'm not sure. Can you advise please?

Machine Name: iMac
Machine Model: iMac6,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM61.0093.B07
SMC Version: 1.10f3
Serial Number: W872820GVGN

 

[Weaselboy]

Is the disc one of those grey ones that comes with a Mac? If it is, those are model/machine specific and they will not work with other models. You can either call Apple and buy the grey machine specific disc or just call them and buy a retail Snow Leopard disk.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard

 

[ObiWayneKenobi]

Is the disc one of those grey ones that comes with a Mac? If it is, those are model/machine specific and they will not work with other models. You can either call Apple and buy the grey machine specific disc or just call them and buy a retail Snow Leopard disk.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard

Thanks Weaselboy. It's a grey one, yes. I thought that might be the case. So this iMac will take the new versions of OS X then?

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks Weaselboy. It's a grey one, yes. I thought that might be the case. So this iMac will take the new versions of OS X then?

It will run 10.6 Snow Leopard, but nothing newer like Lion or Mountain Lion. Snow Leopard has been updated to the point it is very stable and Apple still issues security updates for it, so it would serve you well on that machine.

With 1GB of RAM it may be tad slow depending on what you want to do. Might want to bump up to 4GB if you can swing it.

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Thanks Weaselboy. It's a grey one, yes. I thought that might be the case. So this iMac will take the new versions of OS X then?

The latest version of OS X that iMac should run is Lion.

That iMac I think came with Tiger so to upgrade you would want the retail Snow Leopard disk. You could then upgrade to Lion via the Mac App Store.

However you would really want to upgrade the RAM, as 1GB isn't really enough. I think Lion may require 2GB.

 

[ObiWayneKenobi]

Thank you both. I intend to get an additional 2Gb RAM - the manual that came with suggests it is only upgradable to 3Gb total.

 

[BrianBaughn]

For RAM info, go to everymac.com and see what they say is the actual maximum amount you can put in it.