Upgrade Older MacBook OS X 10.6.8 to El Capitan 10.11.6 in Stages

I ordered some RAM memory expansion for the inherited old MacBook I have. It failed to be recognized by the machine. I swapped it with the old chips 3 times and the old worked, the new did not. Emails back and forth with the supplier and I'm waiting again for a replacement.

The MacBook is from early 2009 and was upgraded once already but it was very slow and the startup time was too much for the user.  It also had MS Word failing to work and hanging the machine and I un-installed it and re-installed
etc., with no improvement.

Even with out the new RAM, I figured I would try it with just the SSD upgrade.  That's not such a bad idea since it will let me know which upgraded component made a difference.

I installed an SSD drive I got locally and that worked. It required a re-install of OS X. Luckily, I have the original installation media with this machine. They don't even do that for you any more. Imagine that, you spend $1,500 or so and they can't give you a 25 cent disc. Also in the original box was the $20 upgrade to Snow Leopard that I remember helping to install for the original owner, that was applied and it brought OS X up to 10.6.3.


That wasn't enough to upgrade it to El Capitan. Upgrades from Apple were required to bring the system up to 10.6.8, the minimum to upgrade to the next step. Then I had some trouble finding El Capitan or Yosemite on the download list over at Apple.

 It is not available

 There are many combined upgrades available, but the OS X version number that ends with a zero, is not there on their download list.

The only way to install a major OS upgrade is by using an application that installs to the machine that handles the upgrade. The only way I found that was by searching, google-ing and finding the question and answer in a forum.

 One of the answers had a link that worked. ( some do not work ) That set up the application that then loads the next major OSX version.

That got the machine to El Capitan 10.11.6 which is where it is at the moment. Sierra is not likely going to run on this MacBook, and that's OK.

Part 2 will be a test of how the memory upgrade went, if I ever get the replacement.  Also working on a video of the upgrade.

Link to WWW.NOCATS.NET blog about my vlog