I read from the wiki and other sources online that the BIOS will always load the first 512 byte sector on a detected drive, with the
Code:
0x55aa
signature at the end. However, I found that from the iso produced when I use
Code:
mkisofs
, the first 512 byte sector does end with
Code:
0x55aa
, but it does not contain any code, it is all zeros. The actual bootloader is located at some other sector, which is confirmed by the boot sector location in the el-torito boot table. How does the BIOS successfully load the bootloader then?