10.6.8 Snow Leopard eliminates all lesser cats

The older macOS installers 10.7 to 10.12 that are downloaded outside of the App Store in DMG archives, require you to first run the .pkg file which extracts the real macOS installer into the Applications folder. Look in the Applications folder for the real macOS installer that was extracted.

See this Apple article for details:

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

I don't understand your reference to an app not being compatible with a 64 bit system. 32bit apps should run just fine on any version of macOS up to & including macOS 10.14 Mojave. The only limitation is what version of macOS your particular app is compatible with which you should be able to find out from the documentation....some times this is included with an app's installer.

Edit: And 64 bit apps should be compatible with most versions of macOS 10.7+.....even macOS 10.6 I believe IIRC.

joenative wrote:

Yes. Install on a 32bit was why I needed to get Mtn Lion to install. I misspoke. But why does the download button on the Apple Support site not give me the upgrade? Nothing in the install package tells me what version I'm installing. I have done this more than two times. Each time visually successful but demonstrably un-so. The package states a minimum of Lion to install.

You need to provide links to the articles you used to acquire the Apple software since I still have no clue what you are running or attempting to install. Back in the day Apple actually provided downloads of every macOS update patch (two versions in fact) which required the base major OS version to be already installed.

Then you also have the actual full blown macOS installers for the major versions of macOS. These are only available from Apple using the links & instructions in the following Apple article which I provided in my earlier post:

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

joenative wrote:

The problem is more complex than we think I'm certain. BTW, here is the site I downed the ML Installer: Mac OS X Mountain Lion Installer - Apple Support

And to reiterate: After the installer runs to install ML, I still have Snow Leopard showing as my OS.

After running the .pkg file from the mounted DMG file you downloaded, did you then go to the Applications folder and run the "Install macOS Mountain Lion" installer? If so, what happens at you use the installer located in the Applications folder?

Now as to the curiosity with Lightroom...I revived my Mac Mini (2009) with LR 1 installed on 10.6.8. On another partition with El Capitan I was able to install LR 6 with a caveat. The program wants for me to register on the Adobe site which I do, but they never ask for my serial number and every time I open LR it askes my to sign in on the Adobe site.

Adobe has disabled the activation servers for the older versions of their apps. I just saw this mentioned by another regular contributor recently.

My suggestion would be to clone your 10.6.8 installation to the other partition using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC), then try upgrading macOS to 10.11 El Capitan to see if the older Adobe installation will still work. You will need to use the older version of CCC that is compatible with one of your older operating systems (all the old versions of CCC are available to download from the developer with some of them being free, others will have free trial periods......Bombich is an awesome developer in more ways than one).

You can also try using Migration Assistant to migrate your 10.6.8 installation to the 10.11 installation.

Some third party proprietary software licenses & activations such as Adobe or Microsoft may transfer with one of these two methods, or it may not be possible to keep the license/activation active. This is one of the dangers of using software requiring license codes and activation with remote servers....they can be taken away at any time. Isn't it amazing that a small software developer such as Bombich still allows & provides access to their older outdated apps, but the big boys don't?

joenative wrote:

There is no assurance Lightroom 6 will be able to install on a 64bit system, but I have LR 3 on it now.

Lightroom 6 uses 64-bit code, and requires a version of the Mac operating system that is able to run 64-bit code. Some versions of the Mac operating system only support 32-bit code, some only support 64-bit code, and some support both.

I believe that the issues you would actually run into are the following:

• Lightroom 6 will not install on Catalina and later. I believe that the main application uses 64-bit code, but the installation and activation code uses 32-bit code that won't run on Catalina and later.

• Even on earlier versions of macOS, if you do a clean reinstall of Lightroom 6, you may find that you can't use it. From what I'm reading in this thread , Adobe not only has stopped distributing Lightroom 6 installation kits, but has taken the Lightroom 6 DRM activation servers off line. (Showing, once again, that DRM is not your friend.)

Which means that Lightroom 6 users are essentially hosed.

joenative wrote:

Yes. Install on a 32bit was why I needed to get Mtn Lion to install. I misspoke. But why does the download button on the Apple Support site not give me the upgrade? Nothing in the install package tells me what version I'm installing. I have done this more than two times. Each time visually successful but demonstrably un-so. The package states a minimum of Lion to install.

If you are running an older version of Mac OS X, it might be too old to

• Successfully access most https Web sites
• Successfully access the App Store (where Lion and Mountain Lion were once distributed, although I don't know if they are still present in the App Store any longer).

The original form of https security was discovered to be less secure than people thought. There was a movement to upgrade Web browsers and Web sites to use a stronger form of security. Snow Leopard's version of Safari does not know about the changes, and so probably would have trouble connecting to modern https sites.

The Mac mini (Mac OS X Server, Late 2009) can run anything from Mac OS X Server (10.6) (Snow Leopard Server) to OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan).

If LR3 is compatible with El Capitan – I have no idea whether it is - maybe you could try upgrading to El Capitain.

However, if Adobe has shut down the Lightroom 6 DRM servers, making it impossible to do a clean install of LR 6, I would guess that the same would be true with respect to the Lightroom 3 DRM servers. The second that you have to do any sort of clean install, say "bye bye" to LR3.

Snow Leopard shipped both on retail

DVDs, and on recovery DVDs for Macs that came with it.

Apple discontinued the retail DVD kit, but has not made Snow Leopard available on their download site. It has been years since they discontinued the retail DVD kit, and that is why original copies are hard to find now.

It looks like Apple has shuffled stuff around a time or two since "back in the day", but there are some software download links for Snow-Leopard-related patches on the second page:

Apple – Documentation - Mac

Apple – Documentation – Mac OS X 10.6

If you have an older version of Snow Leopard, there is a combo download on the old Apple download site that will update it to 10.6.8. But that one requires you to be on some version of 10.6 first.