Snow Leopard (macOS X 10.6.3) unable to connect to Internet. Same with 10.6.8

You are not doing anything wrong. Snow Leopard & the version of Safari on it are just too old. It will not connect to the App Store and there is probably no browser that will work either.

There have been monumental changes in internet connectivity & security, browsers & the App Store in the past 14 years since Snow Leopard was discontinued. Even Firefox ESR v115 only supports back to Sierra (10.12) and it is expected to be End-Of-Life'd any time now.

What model is the Mac are you working with? If it could be upgraded at least to Sierra, you *may* be able to use Firefox.

FWIW, I also have an iMac still running Snow Leopard but I use it as a standalone machine for certain apps that were discontinued when Lion (10.7) was released. Lion was the next release after Snow Leopard and there were huge architectural changes in OS X that resulted in a lot of apps being no longer viable. I keep a full bootable backup of the HD just in case it ever goes south, so I can reinstall everything.

The old iCab Browser has a download version compatible with Snow Leopard. Based on the ancient network security protocol versions in Snow Leopard, it may still fail to connect to modern web sites and email services that employ current security protocols.

davidneale1 wrote:

The Mac is an iMac 27 inch Mid 2010, 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3, with 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3.

Try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to attempt to access the online High Sierra installer....assuming you had macOS 10.13 High Sierra installed on this system at some point in the past. You will need to use Fix #3 in the following article as well:

Unfortunately some Macs may only boot to the older online installer which originally shipped from the factory (or in this case macOS 10.7 Lion) regardless of the keys used for booting.

If you are unable to access the High Sierra installer through Internet Recovery Mode, then you will need to do two upgrades.....the first one being to upgrade to macOS 10.11 El Capitan which will require you to download the El Capitan DMG installer archive file from Apple.....probably easiest to use another system with actual access to the Internet & transferring the DMG file to the Snow Leopard iMac. Once you install macOS El Capitan, then you should theoretically be able to install macOS High Sierra (unless Apple changed the App Store access and no longer permits El Capitan access).

Here is an Apple article with instructions for downloading & installing older versions of macOS such as macOS 10.11 El Capitan.....make sure to read all of the instructions for El Capitan very carefully as there are multiple steps involved to extract the real El Capitan installer into the Applications folder:

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

SSL to TLS:

In 2015, researchers discovered that Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Internet encryption was not nearly as secure as was thought, and needed to be replaced. Internet encryption quickly moved to Transport Layer Security (TLS) which was rapidly deployed across the Internet. Over time, sites tightened requirements for what was acceptable for encryption.

Apple issued Safari version 9 in 10.11 El Capitan version of MacOS, which included TLS encryption. It was later provided by Security Update into the two previous versions of MacOS. 10.10 Yosemite and 10.9 Mavericks, PROVIDED you applied all available software updates.

MacOS versions older than those can not make a lot of secure [httpS:] connections on the Internet, because by todays standards, your proffered SSL encryption is considered inadequate.

My guess is you're doing nothing wrong. The version of Safari is no doubt too old for today's internet.

You're welcome. That's also possible. High Sierra is a bit long in the tooth. I'm not sure if there is any browser available that will work. Someone else may know.

Just a correction, I don't know why I typed High Sierra, Not enough coffee I suppose. Snow Leopard is even worse.

You can run. High Sierra 1013.6 on that Mac.

Sorry, your last post wasn't there when I was typing.