Old iMac OS Upgrade Question

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I acquired an old Blueberry (All-In-One) iMac for the purpose of running Excel 5 in an OS8 environment. It is currently running OS 8.5.1. The floppy drive I acquired in order to load Excel 5 from floppies requires that I be running at least OS 8.6. "No problem" I thought. I have OS 8.6 System, System Resources and Finder and I thought I remembered that all I had to do to upgrade (after copying the old System Folder for safety) was to copy over these files and reboot. No such luck. The iMac loads the System then hangs, refusing to load the extensions, etc.

I can get back to the desktop with an OS 9.1 CD to rearrange things. Unfortunately, while the iMac boots from the CD, I can't install OS9 (which would be fine with me) because the CD says my firmware is out of date and won't let me run the Firmware Update... telling me I need to have a G3 (which I do). Hmmmmmmmmmm......

I just need to get to 8.6. Any ideas out there?
 
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But can you not upgrade 8.5.1 by inserting 8.6 disc then running install app to upgrade to 8.6. then do Firmware update then upgrade to 9.1 or 9.2. Surely you can reformat HD and put 8.6 on it?
 
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But can you not upgrade 8.5.1 by inserting 8.6 disc then running install app to upgrade to 8.6. then do Firmware update then upgrade to 9.1 or 9.2. Surely you can reformat HD and put 8.6 on it?

Sorry, but I no longer have the OS 8.6 install disk. That would solve everything. In that case I wouldn't even have to reformat the drive (Macs don't require that).
 
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Thanks louishen. Actually, someone in another forum located a .smi archive of the OS 8.6 update. I copied it onto a CD and it ran like a champ. Nonetheless, thanks for taking the time to reply.
 
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It might be a good idea to find a copy of Nortons Systemworks v6. to repair the system every so often as your missing the original system cds.
 

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