Probably not as bad as you think. What you did is connect the good battery to a short. The neg terminal on the bad battery is itself connected to the frame of the car. So connecting the red to the same frame means you shorted out the good battery across the frame of the car with the bad battery. You therefore did nothing to the car with the bad battery but sucked all the power out of the good battery in a short time. The good battery may be damaged but not other parts of the good car. Take the good battery into autozone or equivalent and have it checked to make sure you didn't burn out a cell.

Haste makes waste. Always go slow and if you are flustered stop!!

Does everything work on the old man's car? The first thing that blows when you hook up the cables wrong is the main fusible link that protects the charging system. The fusible link is one of the larger fuses found in the engine compartment fuse box or on some vehicles it on the positive battery cable clamp at the battery. Turning the key on with wrong cable conections can fry the computer. BIG BUCKS!

I don't know why you would put + on the frame charge the btry and try that. If that works you where very lucky. You could have burn up the comp. I hit the side of my car with a tool will putting a btry in my car and ended up putting a new one in.

You didn't need to move the existing battery connections. Just connecting like to like would have worked. Try again and fingers crossed.

It could have melted the negative battery cable of the car with the dead battery also. Be sure to check.

if you reversed polarity, you can damage the charging system to start with. the diodes are not set up for that high of a voltage. up to 15 volts is ok but when you cross the cables, you get up to and beyond 24 volts. you can blow a fuse in the charging system and a few other circuits too.

just buy a new set of jumppers

if your alternator light didnt come on you might be lucky

My dad's car wouldn't start this morning. I went to jump start it, but I think I ****** up (well I know I ****** up, the question is how bad is it). I connected the good battery correctly black cable to negative red to positive, but at the bed battery's end I connected the black cable to the negative and the red cable to the car frame (instead of red to positive and black to frame or at least the negative terminal). I doesn't seem like it would be a true polarity cross, but the I did melt the insulation off of the jumper cables. Am I going to have to replace a bunch of **** or will it be okay? I've never been this stupid before (I've jumped a car correctly before), so I'm a little stressed out. I don't really have the money to fix a whole bunch of ****.