In some mail I received from Rex McMaster +61 03 9883-7569, sie wrote
> 
> Darren,
> 
> I have the same problem - the major inconvenience is that if a tape is
> present in the drive at boot, then the drive is no longer
> accessible. The machine has to be booted with an empty drive. Is this
> the case with your machine?

No, I can access the tape drive if I boot with a tape in there and it is
reported as being "empty", although on earlier Linux versions, it wouldn't
even boot with it there.

Is it more sensible to not report if the drive is empty/full if many take
a long time to initialise ?  Or maybe wait ?