El Torito (CD-ROM standard)
The El Torito Bootable CD Specification is an extension to the ISO 9660 CD-ROM specification. It is designed to allow a computer to boot from a CD-ROM. It was first issued in January 1995 as a joint proposal by IBM and BIOS manufacturer Phoenix Technologies.
A PC BIOS will not search for a boot sector on an ISO 9660 CD. The El Torito specification sets a CD to emulate a hard disk or floppy disk, the CD would contain one or more disk images - exact replicas - and emulate the INT 13 functions of such disks.
The standard is apparently named after El Torito restaurants., The designers of the format were eating at an El Torito when they came up with the format and wrote the first draft on a napkin.
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