broadway al wrote:
Right now the imac is running flawlessly as far as I can see. I know this computer is getting old and it's so hard when Apple stops supporting do to progress.
As long as that machine still does everything you need, there's no need to upgrade. As Kurt pointed out, you can still buy a replacement Snow Leopard disk, and you can replace the hard drive if necessary. (I'm puzzled a bit when you say it's running flawlessly now, though... if it went from flashing question mark to working flawlessly without you really doing anything to fix it, that's probably a sign of an intermittent hardware failure.)
However, even if it is now working flawlessly, or you decide to replace the hard drive and optical drive if necessary, you will sooner or later be forced to upgrade to a newer system. Older hardware will fail sooner or later, and although you'll be able to replace it with second-hand hardware from places like eBay, the quality of that hardware will get poorer and poorer over time, and the costs will likely go way up for hardware in good shape.
Thus, you need to start planning NOW for what you will do when your hardware dies. And once you eventually replace that hardware, you should think about what you would do if your machine died at least once annually, and prepare for that eventuality each time. That way, you'll never be taken off guard if, for example, you drop your Mac in a pool or it falls off the desk.
As far as the terminal command one of you gave me (since I don't have access to a system disk) is it because of the snow leopard version I'm using the command didn't do anything?
No idea, as I don't know what Terminal command you're referring to. I'm guessing something from one of Eric's links?
The credit card was out of desperation as I put a disk in that had nothing to do with the system. I read if you wiggle a piece of something to the point where you stall the disk it will, and did, eject the disk.
Wherever you read that, make a note right now to remind yourself to never take technical advice from that source ever again! That was some of the worst technical advice I've heard in a really long time.
As Lanny points out, there's a much easier way to pop a disk out, and you should note that you are perfectly free to put disks that have nothing to do with the system into your optical drive. It should read CDs, and depending on the machine, may also read DVDs. If it's a disk it can't read, it should spit it back out. If nothing convinces it to release its grip, it's probably a hardware issue, and putting a credit card in just risks damaging both your credit card and the disk you inserted.