Mac Crash, Time Machine won't restore different osx?

Hey All,
Yesterday my beloved Mac decided to die in the *** after an OSX update, it was running fine before I put in the dreaded update.
I tired everything possible to get the Mac going again to no avail, so ended up having to put in the origional disk (osx 10.5.6), this worked a treat and got the old girl going again, however when I instructed it to use the time machine to restore, it ran for probably about 5hrs then said it couldn't be performed as the time machine was running a different OSX.
Iv tired to restore it going into the desktop, opening time cap and trying to restore from there - I get the same issue.
Also tired to go into the finder, time machine, data, imac_0023dfa.sparse and selected that and got the same issue - OSX
I have no idea what to do next?
Can I update to 10.6.3 without doing all of the inbetween updates (this is what time was running on)
Driving to an apple store, is a 5 day drive or a 6hr flight... so not really an option.
Please help
Thanks in advance for any advice

Since you have both machines connected why don't you use Migration Assistant to transfer your Home folder? Or you can simply drag your documents from the old computer's connected hard drive.
I hope you realize that Migration Assistant will not transfer your Home folder if you have a new Home folder with the same name. Instead it will create a whole new Home folder with a different name. Have you checked to see if you have two user folders located in your /Users/ folder?

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