OSX on Abit IP35 Pro XE, 8gb ram, 9800GT, Q9450

[ChefDude]

Hi

 

I think I've worn out google and the search on this site doesn't seem to work here in my office

 

I'm quite happy getting my hands dirty - multiple windows install experience, ubuntu, fedora, suse, etc, but OSX has me totally foxed!

 

I have retail Leopard install (10.5?) and Snow Leopard Upgrade disks and a mac mini 2ghz too.

 

The best progress I have made is getting a kernel panic after booting from a snow leopard restore on a usb stick with the MACLoader patcher.

 

If someone could answer these, I promise I'll go away and try and figure it out

 

For my setup, should I start with Leopard or Snow Leopard?

Can someone advise which boot loader is the best option using a vanilla install disk?

With my mobo and gfx card, which kexts do you suggest I start with?

I have set the bios to AHCI and tried to match the bios settings with those in the lifehacker tutorial - is there anything else that is a *must* set option?

Do I have to tell the boot information what cpu, ram, etc I have - does it reject the boot if the hardware doesn't match what is in the boot config?

 

Thanks in advance

Michael