4.9 is now available

[Scott Long]

Dan Strick wrote:
> It turns out that 4.9 CD, which produces the message
> 
> 	1. FD 2.88MB System Type-(0f)
> 
> and fails to boot correctly, does this on only one of my systems, a
> very new machine with an ATAPI CD drive on a Gigabyte 8KNXP motherboard
> and AWARD BIOS.  It is the only bootable CD of perhaps a dozen that
> I have tried on this PC that has failed.  For example, the FreeBSD
> 5.1-RELEASE CD boots correctly on this new machine.
> 
> The 4.9 CD boots correctly on one of my older machines that has a SCSI
> CD drive connected to an Adaptec 2940AU.
> 
> I did not attempted to burn and boot any of the 4.9 pre-release CDs
> or any older FreeBSD release on either machine.
> 

5.x uses an entirely different mechanism to make the CD bootable.  The
mechanism used in 4.x is similar to what Microsoft used for the Windows
95/98 CD's (Emulated El-Torito), while 5.x uses a similar mechanism as
Windows 2000/XP (Non-Emulated El-Torito).  Since Microsoft only requires
support for the second method in order to award the MS logo, I suspect
that support for the first method is starting to die out in mainstream
BIOSes.

Scott