help with adding leopard to a partition

Most likely what it means is that your computer cannot boot nor run Leopard. Perhaps you should try installing Snow Leopard instead. You will need a version of Snow Leopard that will boot the computer, of course.

And, has this computer been able to run Leopard?

Then you cannot run Leopard. You cannot install a version of OS X that's earlier than the version with which it came from the factory. If it never ran Leopard then it cannot run Leopard.

Acording to what I have looked up, you did it backwards. If----- you install leopard first on one partition, then, you can install lion on the other. What happens is, it will not let you install an older OS over a newer version. Then after you install the two you can go to pref. folder to pick which one to boot into or just hold down the option key when booting to pick the OS. hope this helps.

That's not quite correct:

You cannot install an older version of OS X over a newer version. But you can first erase the newer version then install the older version. However, this is unnecessary if you are installing the older version onto a separate partition. You can have multiple partitions on a hard drive and install different versions of OS X on each one.

I think what you have in mind is when OS X and OS 9 could co-exist on the same volume. Startup Disk could be used to select which one you wanted to boot the computer. Such an arrangement is not possible with different versions of OS X.

In practice it makes no difference which OS X version was installed first.

Hope this explains it better for you.

Kappy You could be right about the first part of your comment, as I have never felt the need to have two versions of OSX. But as to OSX and 9, they can excist on the same partition, because of clasic in OSX. And on the first OSX you installed OSX on the first eight gigs of the hard drive, then you could install OS9. If you did it the other way arround , it would not let you install OSX. So stated apple back then,and I tried it and found they were right. That is to say, I tried to install the early OSX on an Imac that allready had OS 9.

I believe if you read my post again you will see that what I said was: "OS X and OS 9 could co-exist on the same volume."

Kappy sorry about the post.I should read things a little slower. You said the same thing I did a little differently. So I opened my mouth inserted foot and wiggled toes vigerously.

Watch you don't bite of them toes. 😉

Do you have an intel core two duo or an intel core duo. Lion needs the core two duo. According to apple.