[9fans] Newbie can't get real hardware to boot

[Ian King]

I've just started exploring Plan 9, and I've RTFM'ed but not figured  
out why I can't boot the live CD on real hardware!  I've tried it on  
a number of PCs including laptops, desktops and servers, and it goes  
nowhere.  I've had no problem getting this same CD (either physical  
disk or ISO image, depending) to boot in QEMU, on both x86 and Mac  
PPC platforms.  The platforms in question either do not have a floppy  
or can't support both a floppy and CDROM simultaneously (swappable in  
a laptop).

As I said, I've RTFM'ed and it seems I'm not getting far enough along  
in the process to use that info.  The machines in question all  
recognize the CDROM, provide a line that says "PBS1...", followed by  
the Plan 9 banner, and one more line: "ELCR: XXXX" where XXXX is a  
four digit hex (appearing) number.  Nothing else.

Where can I begin to troubleshoot this?  Thanks for your help -- Ian