Topic       : TOS - The Operating System
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Subject     : Programmieren/Atari
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Compiled on : Atari
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View Ref-File11.5.15.5  The Disk Transfer Area (DTA) for DFSs                   TOS

The DTA is used by the old DOS functions Fsfirst and Fsnext, whose 
clumsy conception by the MSDOS originators still weighs down the 
system like a curse. The partitioning into res1/res2 has historical 
reasons, to make the structure at least in DOS_XFS as compatible as 
possible to old TOSs. For the DOS_XFS and with that for all DFSs the 
structure looks as follows:

dta_sname:  DS.B    12       /* 0x00: Search name (from Fsfirst)   */
dta_usr1 :  DS.L     1       /* 0x0c: For free user assignment     */
dta_usr2 :  DS.L     1       /* 0x10: For free user assignment     */
dta_drive:  DS.B     1       /* 0x14: Logical drive (0..25)        */
dta_attr :  DS.B     1       /* 0x15: Found attribute              */
dta_time :  DS.W     1       /* 0x16: Found time                   */
dta_date :  DS.W     1       /* 0x18: Found date                   */
dta_len  :  DS.L     1       /* 0x1a: Found length                 */
dta_name :  DS.B    14       /* 0x1e: Found filename               */

Note: Here there are two LONGwords for free assignment by the user. 
dta_sname contains the search name already in the current format. In 
dta_usr1 and dta_usr2 one must enter the current position of the 
search, so that a following Fsnext continues the search at the correct 
position.

See also: MagiC's DFS-concept