Bob Nestor,
 > Are you running with a GENERIC or SBC kernel?  My tape drive runs
 > fine under GENERIC, but chokes on an SBC kernel.

I'm happy to report that using the ncrscsi0 driver instead of sbc0 got
things working.

(I'd wanted to put off trying ncrscsi unless it was the last resort
because I'd almost lost a filesystem using before... but the SE/30
seems to like it, unlike the LCIII.)

-- 
Chris Baird,, <cjb@brushtail.apana.org.au>
``NetBSD is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly
  he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.'' -- Kierkegaard (Groening..)