HT1352 After Accepting Update On 32-bit Mac Mini Running Snow Leopard 10.6.8, The Mac Won't Boot

About a month ago, I was using my older Mac-Mini which was running 10.6.8, a screen came up from the Mac App Store, telling me that an update to OS X was available so I took the update.
I regret it now.  When the Mac restarted itself, it went down, but it hasn't been back up since.
I've been around Macs a long time now, and I should know by now to restart, quitting all of my apps and everything as much as possible.  The Apple updater really should restart before and after a system update, in my humble opinion.
But, I want to get my old Mac running again now.
I've researched this some and I've tried the following
* Disconnected all peripherals, except the monitor, and cycled power.
* Cycled the power and tried to zap the P-RAM (NV-RAM)
* Cycled the power and then hold down the "D" key (for diagnostic).
* Cycled the power again and hold down the Option key (to boot from the original optical disk).
* Cycled the power again and hold down the "C" key (ditto)
* Cycled the power again and hold down Command-V (for verbose mode)
* Cycled the power again and hold down Option-Command-O-F (to get into open-firmare) I don't know if I have an open-firmare password, but nothing else worked.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1352
   Maybe open-firmare isn't the issue as to why the other key-combinations didn't work.
I've tried a different keyboard and mouse. 
I doubt that the problem is a hardware problem.  The problem seems so highly correlated with my taking anothing OS update from Apple.

@Carolyn, thank you very much for your reply.  I appreciate you taking the time to try and help me.
> Hold down the C key to boot from an install disc, not the Option key.
I inserted my Snow Leopard install disk and cycled the power, holding downt he C key and I got to the grey screen with the Apple logo in the center of the screen with a little spinning progress indicator.  This is what I always get.
> Try booting in Safe Mode and verify the startup disk for errors.
> Startup your Mac in Safe Mode
> A Safe Mode boot takes much longer than a normal boot so be patient.
I carefully read and followed the link on Safe Mode that you provided and I got the same result as always.
> Once you are in Safe Mode, launch Disk Utility located in HD > Applications > Utilities
> Select the startup disk on the left then select the First tab.
> Click Verify Disk  (not Verify Disk Permissions)
Maybe it is something of a hardware problem.  Maybe the disk does need to be repaired, but I can't get in to repair it now.
I will keep this in mind when taking updates from Apple in the future.
1. Quit all applications.
2. Verify the disk and repair any errors.
3. Restart.
4. Then, let Apple update my software.
> Boot from your install disc while holding down the C key if Disk Utility reports problems.
> Mac OS X 10.6: Reinstalling Mac OS X
I've done this before, with the same Mac-Mini and the same optiical disk, and it worked.
I also tried starting in target-disk mode, but I always get the same result, the grey screen with an Apple logo and a spinning progress indicator.
I don't know what else to try.
-- Kaydell
http://kaydell.us

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