Running a hackintosh for giggles.

[Akucaen]

My question is where do I start? My Vista laptop has been running the Win7 beta since release. It's about to expire and I have to reinstall the OS anyway, so I figure "why not?"

As for the laptop itself, it's a Centrino 2 platform (Monteniva) with a Radeon 3450. Past the non-integrated GPU, it's the regular Centrino 2 hardware. From what I understand my hardware falls within the MacOS boundaries, but I don't know which "version" (hack) to use to install with. (Although I read elsewhere that I could just slide an install disk in and run it anyway due to the platform?)

I really don't know where to begin, any help would be appreciated about the install/build/versions to use. I can get the ISOs myself through private trackers.

[fishstix]

it's highly customized towards specific pieces of hardware. like basically the easiest way to jump into it is to find someone who was able to get it to work with your specific laptop. on the wiki for desktops, it's a bit easier, can look up your mobo and if you're lucky, someone's done it already and you can see if it's possible along with what build to use.

I was going to do this myself, but never got around to it after I upgraded my computer's mobo

[Blabj]

Just gonna back up what fishstix has said. It's a lot easier to follow a tutorial than it is to rewrite drivers and find the various little hacks needed to get it up and running.

[Omniyoji]

Not really the best place to be asking for this although I know a few people on here are running one. When I started it back then I didn't know what I was getting into since I didn't know a damn thing about macs, but the forums ->here<- were a great help. People are nice and helpful, long as you don't act like a moron. You'll be mainly modifying kext files to turn on your hardware. If you have previous experience with Terminal you should be fine.

Really do set some time aside for this project since you'll have to be rummaging through countless searches to find fixes for components that aren't compatible after install, unless you're one of the lucky few.

The best place to start would be

->here<-

Scroll down to the hardware section on the main page and browse "portable computers" to find your exact laptop. The more recent your hardware the less info on it (naturally). Choose an install DVD with patches that will suite your hardware and a version of OSX you want.

OSX is a great OS and installing it on an X86 makes for a fun weekend project. Enjoy

Goodluck~