At 10:38 AM +0300 5/31/99, you wrote:

:)Okay, I must confess in being a newbie when it comes to 9 track drives, so
:)what on earth are these ???? I know nrmt* is no-rewind-on-close, but are the
:)[0,4,8,12] different densities or what ?

ISTR that zero is normal mode (reads one block at a time), 8 is "streaming"
(much faster if your tape drive supports this).  Not quite sure about 4 and
12.

:)I tried almost every combination of mt -f /dev/rmt[insert number here] stat
:)but no go. I always get "can't get stat.... bp== NULL" (hazy memory).

Could be that your tape drive doesn't support the stat command.  Remember,
the mt program is also used for much newer tape drives (like DAT) so some
features might not be available.

:)One problem might be the configuration, because I got the drive from an old
:)HP3000 system and I didn't get any documentation with it.

<http://fatmac.ee.cornell.edu/hp300/peripherals/index.html#7979>

Good luck,
  -- MW