Niel, Thanks for your advise. The Combo updater worked well, got the system up to 10.6.8.
The problem I'm having is that I cannot locate the actual El Capitan in the App Store, nor anywhere for that matter.
I found osxupdates 10.11.1 thtough 10.11.6, along with combo updates 10.11.2 through 10.11.6.
Ehen I tried to execute those, it complains that the installer is needed and states that os x 10.11 is needed.
BTW safari would never successfully connects securely with the apple server. I had to use my old MacBook's chrome browser to download and transfer the files with a USB drive. Chrome on the iMac claims it needs mac os 10.11 at the very least to work.
And while at it, my MacBook, also Intel powered is at 10.6.8, if I do succeed in finding a version of El Capitan, would that be the newest os that the MacBook would support?
I thank you again for the advise and sincerely hope that you can point me somewhere where I can locate the elusive El Capitan
Miguel