What is the best way to get your bch to show?
You can 'look' at your BCH in a block explorer (e.g.
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/blocks).
Just paste in your addresses which had BTC on it at the time the fork/snapshot happened.
Is there a step by step guide on BCT about updating old wallets like electrum?
What kind of wallet backup do you have?
Just a wallet file? Or private keys in plain/encrypted text?
Do you have a mnemonic seed? (not sure if those already existed back in 1.x versions).
Usually it should work if you just move the wallet file into the folder of your updated electrum version.
But make sure to back it up! Always.
I was thinking of just transferring the old coin to new wallets on different machines, but I think that might lose the bch???
Your BCH are 'sitting on your private keys' which had BTC at the time of the fork.
You can move you BTC's without any risk to your BCH. Actually you
should move your BTC before importing your private keys into a BCH wallet - for security reasons.