I have a Maynard Tape Drive, support EXABYTE-8500 8mm tapes, I bought
of eBay. I was using it with a 68K based NetBSD 1.5 set up, and it
worked fine. The 660av ceased working. I moved the tape drive over to
a 1.5.1 set up running on a PowerMac 6500/300. I installed amanda (I
compiled it, instead of using the package) and I get a error about the
inability to right file marks. My console output has a bunch of error
messages as well.

I'm not quite sure what is happening. I had no trouble with the 660av
as far as reading or writing from the tape drive. I haven't tried to
recover what is recoverable from my old back up because I want to make
sure I don't damage the tapes with viable backups on them. I am able
to run the amlabel program but then I can't run a real backup.

-- 
Josh Kuperman
josh@ssimr.com
http://www.ssimr.com

The error from amanda:

These dumps were to tape DailySet102.
*** A TAPE ERROR OCCURRED: [[writing filemark: Input/output error]].

This is  from /var/log/messages

Aug 22 11:50:53 regret /netbsd: mesh0: timeout state 3
st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x11 01 00 00 01 00
    SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
   INFO FIELD:  1
 COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
     ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected

st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x11 01 00 00 01 00
    SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
   INFO FIELD:  1
 COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
     ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected

Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd: st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x11 01
 00 00 01 00
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:     SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:    INFO FIELD:  1
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:  COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:      ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd: st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x11 01
 00 00 01 00
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:     SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:    INFO FIELD:  1
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:  COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:      ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected
Aug 22 11:51:10 regret /netbsd:
st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x08 00 00 10 00 00
    SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
   INFO FIELD:  4096
 COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
     ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected

st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x08 00 00 10 00 00
    SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
   INFO FIELD:  4096
 COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
     ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected

Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd: st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x08 00
 00 10 00 00
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:     SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:    INFO FIELD:  4096
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:  COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:      ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd: st0(mesh0:4:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x08 00
 00 10 00 00
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:     SENSE KEY:  Blank Check
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:    INFO FIELD:  4096
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:  COMMAND INFO:  1 (0x1)
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd:      ASC/ASCQ:  End-Of-Data Detected
Aug 22 11:51:18 regret /netbsd: