omaxximus

Q: How to upgrade to Yosemite from 10.5.8

Hi All,

Let me preface by saying that I'm new to Macs.  I am buying a friends iMac, and want to know if this being an older Mac, is it possible to upgrade it to the current OS? I received it formatted with a reinstall of the original OS.  Unfortunately I do not know the next step to take and any help would be appreciated

  Model Name: iMac

  Model Identifier: iMac8,1

  Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

  Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz

  Number Of Processors: 1

  Total Number Of Cores: 2

  L2 Cache: 6 MB

  Memory: 2 GB

  Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

  Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00

  SMC Version (system): 1.30f1

Thank you,

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jul 30, 2015 10:07 PM

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Q: How to upgrade to Yosemite from 10.5.8

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Kappy,Solvedanswer

    Kappy Kappy Jul 30, 2015 10:09 PM in response to omaxximus
    Level 10 (271,328 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 30, 2015 10:09 PM in response to omaxximus

    Your upgrade path is:

     

    Upgrading to Snow Leopard

     

    You can purchase Snow Leopard through the Apple Store: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.). The price is $19.99 plus tax. You will be sent physical media by mail after placing your order.

     

    After you install Snow Leopard you will have to download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 to update Snow Leopard to 10.6.8 and give you access to the App Store. Access to the App Store enables you to download Mavericks if your computer meets the requirements.

     

         Snow Leopard General Requirements

     

           1. Mac computer with an Intel processor

           2. 1GB of memory

           3. 5GB of available disk space

           4. DVD drive for installation

           5. Some features require a compatible Internet service provider;

               fees may apply.

           6. Some features require Apple’s iCloud services; fees and

               terms apply.

     

    Upgrading to Yosemite

     

    You can upgrade to Yosemite from Lion or directly from Snow Leopard. Yosemite can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for FREE.

     

    Upgrading to Yosemite

     

    To upgrade to Yosemite you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Download Yosemite from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. Yosemite is free. The file is quite large, over 5 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.

     

        OS X Mavericks/Yosemite- System Requirements

     

          Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Yosemite

     

             1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later

             2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later

             3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

             4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later

             5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

             6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

             7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

     

    To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.

     

         Are my applications compatible?

     

             See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.

     

    Upgrading to Lion

     

    If your computer does not meet the requirements to install Mavericks, it may still meet the requirements to install Lion.

     

    You can purchase Lion at the Online Apple Store. The cost is $19.99 (as it was before) plus tax.  It's a download. You will get an email containing a redemption code that you then use at the Mac App Store to download Lion. Save a copy of that installer to your Downloads folder because the installer deletes itself at the end of the installation.

     

         Lion System Requirements

     

           1. Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7,

               or Xeon processor

           2. 2GB of memory

           3. OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)

           4. 7GB of available space

           5. Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.

  • by omaxximus,

    omaxximus omaxximus Jul 30, 2015 10:31 PM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 30, 2015 10:31 PM in response to Kappy

    Kappy, Thank you so much for the extremely quick response, I have ordered Snow Leopard, it shows to arrive on Tuesday.  I will come back and update this post with all of my successes or failures. 

  • by Eau Rouge,

    Eau Rouge Eau Rouge Jul 30, 2015 11:22 PM in response to omaxximus
    Level 4 (2,969 points)
    Mac App Store
    Jul 30, 2015 11:22 PM in response to omaxximus

    You may also want to upgrade your RAM. 2GBs is the minimum requirement according to Apple for Yosemite, but in reality 4GBs is more realistic

    and if you can afford more all the better, running at 2GBs will be very slow.

    Once you have Snow Leopard installed you will have access to the App Store using your Apple ID.

    The App Store is handy for keeping you informed of what updates are available for you, and you can use it to download those updates.

    My recommendation would be to take note of those updates and then go to the Apple Support Download pages, from there press the Browse By Product button and dig about for your updates and install from there. The downloads are faster and more secure than the App Store, which can sometimes drop the connection. Unfortunately when you come to download Yosemite you will have to use the App Store (only place it is available and this applies to Safari too), but you can revert to the Apple Support Pages for incremental updates.

    One other thing you may find useful regarding downloading Yosemite. The automatic procedure is to delete the Yosemite Installer once the OS has been installed, but you can interrupt this process, and save the Installer which is very handy. Once the App Store has completed the download process it will ask you whether you want to install the downloaded programme, at this point don't but look in your Applications folder and you should see an item named

    Install Yosemite OS X.app (or something similar), you can at this point copy that to another part of the iMac or on to an external disc or USB stick for safe keeping. You can then go back to the App Store and continue the installation. The reason for doing this is, if you ever need to reinstall the OS you can do it from this file which is quicker than booting into recovery mode and reinstalling from Apples servers, which depending on your internet connection could take hours. Hope all this makes sense, and as far as I remember correct, but please use these forums to cross reference anything and double check, there are thousands of people on here with great advice and knowledge ( they've helped me enormously ).

     

    Good Luck with your iMac

    and above all have fun

     

    Apple - Support - Downloads

  • by omaxximus,

    omaxximus omaxximus Jul 31, 2015 10:36 AM in response to Eau Rouge
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2015 10:36 AM in response to Eau Rouge

    I went to the Crucial site and the largest they showed for this iMac was 4 GB compatible.  Do you know if it can take more than that? Maybe two 4GB sticks? Again coming from a pc world, if the OS can only read say 8 gigs of ram, I can add two 8 gb sticks for a total of 16gb of memory, but its still will only read 8 and actually will only use (7.87) of it. 

  • by Arron Wood,

    Arron Wood Arron Wood Jul 31, 2015 10:46 AM in response to Eau Rouge
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jul 31, 2015 10:46 AM in response to Eau Rouge

    crucial.com or macsales.com are recommend for mac compatible ram.

    Here is a link to ram for your computer:

    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/6400DDR2S4MP/

    $42 bucks to get 4GB ram

    it is $127 to get 6GB b/c it would be (1) 2GB and (1) 4GB 'sticks' of ram, and the 4GB is really expensive.

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Jul 31, 2015 10:50 AM in response to omaxximus
    Level 9 (72,310 points)
    iTunes
    Jul 31, 2015 10:50 AM in response to omaxximus

    I now have 6GB installed on a early 2008 iMac supposedly limited to 4 GB and noticed an improvement.

  • by Eau Rouge,

    Eau Rouge Eau Rouge Aug 1, 2015 12:49 AM in response to omaxximus
    Level 4 (2,969 points)
    Mac App Store
    Aug 1, 2015 12:49 AM in response to omaxximus

    If you used the Crucial scanner facility to determine the RAM available for your machine it also says not to exceed the manufacturers recommendations.

    so if the maximum RAM your machine can take is 4GBs (2x2GBs) then thats what you should stick to.

    You could go to the iMac forum on these pages and post a question about adding more memory than recommended, perhaps somebody has experience of doing that.

  • by omaxximus,

    omaxximus omaxximus Aug 4, 2015 1:45 PM in response to Eau Rouge
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2015 1:45 PM in response to Eau Rouge

    Hi Team,

    I have received the RAM and upgraded succesfully to which the iMac ran quicker (as expected).  I just had Snow Leopard 10.6.3 delivered, pretty fast I might say seeing as how I ordered on Friday Night.  Do you all know if this cd is a bootable to install as a new OS cd, or if these cd's are intended to upgrade a pre-existing OS?  I only ask because as a choice, I would rather start with a clean install as opposed to an upgrade.

     

    Thank you all for your quick responses and help, much appreciated!!

  • by Eau Rouge,Helpful

    Eau Rouge Eau Rouge Aug 4, 2015 10:06 PM in response to omaxximus
    Level 4 (2,969 points)
    Mac App Store
    Aug 4, 2015 10:06 PM in response to omaxximus

    Yes should be a fully bootable cd. When starting/restarting your iMac press Command-C on your keyboard to boot from cd.