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 (Spanish: the little bull) 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.

External link

• The "El Torito" Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification, Version 1.0