4.9 is now available

[Dan Strick]

Scott Long wrote:
>
> 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.

Some possibly relevant/confirming data points:
  1) My Win98 CD fails to boot on my new machine.
  2) My Win98SE CD boots correctly.
  3) My WinXP CD boots correctly.

This could prove very inconvenient for a lot of people who are
now buying new machines and hope to run FreeBSD 4.9 because it
has better support for modern motherboard devices.  I tested
4.9-prerelease support for all of my motherboard devices, but
it never occurred to me to test the CD bootstrap.

Dan Strick
strick at covad.net