The quarantine has got me trying new things, so I am a total noob here. Construction is much more my game.
I have an old (circa 2009) iMac with the Intel T7600 Core 2 Duo CPU at 2.33 GHz. I successfully installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on it, and in my pride removed the old OS X. (I have since successfully updated to 18.04 LTS 32 bit). Without understanding anything, I installed 32 bit architecture but now need 64 bit to run the school programs my kids need.
My research has led me to needing to do a fresh install of Ubuntu to get to 64 bit architecture. I have confirmed that my processor will run 64 bit by running the 'lscpu' command in terminal and getting this feedback:
lscpu screenshot confirms 64-bit capability w/ Intel T7600 2.33GHz CPU
I created a boot DVD for 18.04 LTS 64-bit but when I boot my computer with the dvd in the drive, it stops at a white screen. I can hear the dvd drive spinning but it locks here and won't go any farther. I thought maybe my disc was bad, so I made another. No luck. I tried my original 16.04 LTS dvd that I originally did my install with. No luck. I tried making a 16.04 LTS 64 bit dvd. No luck.
How can I get my computer to get to the boot menu so that I can make the change to 64 bit architecture?
Thanks for your help.
With much help I found out that older Macs can run 64 bit but require 32 bit EFI. We found a 64 bit .iso with the 32 bit EFI and the install ran perfectly. The .iso can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mp1c2cf3f2dw25u/blackmacbook64.iso?dl=0