Can I connect to iMac with inoperative display card using a macbook to see what might be on the harddrive?

I have an older iMac 24" (mid 2006) that has an inoperative display card. The computer went down in early 2009. I had asked about accessing the hard drive to see if any of the files were able to be off loaded into another hard drive or onto usb sticks or another computer, but lost interest due to difficulty in doing so.

Now comes an opportunity to upgrade from mid 2009 macbook to current version macbook. The older macbook is running El Capitan OS X, and still has substantial room on the hard drive. I was wondering if there is a way to connect the macbook to the iMac to see what might be on the hard drive that might be useful like documents, photos, and the like?