The USB stick is still there. And sometimes, just sometimes, he swears he hears a faint chime from inside the drawer. Spinning clockwise.
Snow Leopard is picky about USBs. The 32-bit installer will not boot from a GUID partition made on a modern Mac without specific flags. Mac Os X 10.6 Snow Leopard 32 Bit Iso Download
Here is a critical technical nuance:
A low chime played. Not the Snow Leopard boot chime — something deeper. A sound that felt less like audio and more like memory. The USB stick is still there