You may want to call Outlaw and ask about it, but based on what was done with the 1070 I suspect the 990's already in the warehouse will ship with the old firmware. The update doesn't appear to be a big deal, especially if you don't have the 990 in an equipment rack yet and can take it to a PC (desktop or laptop). I've got a laptop that I'm going to use for the firmware update, but folks that don't will need to either find a long USB or RS-232 cable, move a PC to the equipment rack temporarily, or move their 990 to a PC.