I cc'd this to port-sparc in the event it's sparc specific but I haven't
played with my x86 boxes of late and don't know if it's universal.

environment: IPX with HP 4mm tape running NetBSD v1.1 (ok sue me)

I can tar/dd to my heart's content off/on the drive.  mt seems to work
pretty much ok except for 'mt status' which returns 'unknown' or some
such error.  Trying to run dump results in an immediate, "EOM reached,
rewinding..., eject, is the next volume mounted? yes/no" query 
sequence.  I've tried 'mt fsf 1' to no avail.
Is there something special I have to do to get this 4mm to
work?  I used to run Amanda (distributed tape backup system from UMD)
just fine many months ago, again with the same model 4mm drive.

I was forced to dd my filesystems to tape as a last resort.  Any 
caveats I should be aware of in the event I need to restore?  DD sure
is SLLLOOOOWWWW!!

thanks