From: Ken Y. <ke...@nl...> - 2001-04-25 15:02:01
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[http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/v5ann.html] The Etherboot Project is pleased to announce the release of Etherboot 5.0.0, the latest production version, available immediately from http://sourceforge.net/projects/etherboot/. Firstly heaps of thanks to all those who have contributed code, sent in bug reports and in one way or another improved the quality of the software. In particular much is owed to Marty Connor, who runs the http://rom-o-matic.net/ site, which serves ROM images on the fly. A full list of acknowledgements can be found in the Etherboot documentation, in the User Manual or in the LOG file. If you have contributed and I have not included you, please contact me and I'll fix it. The major improvements since the last production release (4.6.12) are: * Improved drivers for more Tulip, EEPRO100, Via-Rhine, and Lance variants, and a new driver for the SiS900 family. * Compliance (as far as we can tell) with the BIOS Boot Specification for PCI NIC PnP ROMs. The code will try to accommodate non-PnP BIOSes too. Legacy ROMs for ISA NICs are still supported. * User and developer documentation have been revised, rearranged and rewritten. Compile options are now better classified and documented. * Major code cleanup: Many drivers have been audited and code added to properly handle timeouts and disabling. The code base has been made ANSI-C compliant as far as possible. 16-bit support (for the 088/086/186/286) has been discontinued in the interest of code clarity. Code changes to conserve memory space were made. Identifiers, particularly macros, have been renamed to match Linux nomenclature and signatures as far as possible to reduce programmer confusion. * New feature: Etherboot loads ELF format boot images made by mkelf-linux. * New feature: Etherboot supports the Vendor Class Identifier mechanism which allows Etherboot enabled clients to respond selectively to DHCP servers. * New feature: Etherboot supports auxiliary programs that return to Etherboot and direct further loading operations. See the Etherboot Developer Manual for more information on this capability. * Etherboot drivers can now have up to a 45kB memory footprint. * nasm/as86 are no longer needed, the 16-bit assembler routines have been converted to gas syntax. * New floppy boot block that also works with hard disk partitions. * Support for loading debugging symbols in FreeBSD loads. * mknbi has been split into a separate package for ease of maintenance. * Many new contributed utilities and documents in the contrib/ directory. * Many contributed links to external documentation. and many other small improvements. Of course, it being a .0 release, I'm sure that there are bugs, hopefully none serious. Expect a .1 :-). This release is to mark a milestone and give users a production release to use and developers a base for the next development series. Now to disappear to a Pacific island for 6 months. Hmm, I am on a very large Pacific island already. Drat. MD5 sums: 52ca8618fa13471ff5cab9857f5ffbb5 etherboot-5.0.0.tar.bz2 1049be887474457981b45d806201791e etherboot-5.0.0.tar.gz |