Dead HD trying to find out about this mac

I am fixing a Macbook for a friend and his hard drive is dead. Almost all the numbers on the back of the computer are worn off. Is there a way to find out what the computer has in it by way of terminal commands possibly? I am trying to find out if I can buy him Mountain Lion and install it on a new hard drive.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Laura Drew

Once you've put in the new hard drive and formatted it for the Mac you'll want to put OS 10.6 Snow Leopard on it. The 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD is in the Apple online store. You can get it for $19.99. You will need to be running 10.6.8 to access the App Store to order Lion or Mountain Lion. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
Put your 10.6 install DVD into the optical drive (CD/DVD drive) and reboot.  As soon as you hear the boot chime, hold down the "c" key on your keyboard (or the Option Key until the Install Disk shows up) until the apple shows up. That will force your MacBook to boot from the install DVD in the optical drive.
When it does start up, you'll see a panel asking you to choose your language. Choose your language and press the Return key on your keyboard once. It will then present you with an Installation window.
Completely ignore this window and click on Utilities in the top menu and scroll down to Disk Utility and click it. You should see your hard drive in the left hand column along with your other drives. Click on the drive and select the Erase tab. Set the format value to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click the Erase button. After that has finished select the Partition tab. Type in a Name for your hard drive and select how many partitions you want from the Volume Scheme. The usual setting is one partition. Click on the Options button after you've selected a partition to make sure it's set for GUID. Then click the Apply button and after the Partitioning is done quit Disk Utility.
You can now follow the instructions on the install screen             

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