Reading 9-track tapes in Linux

Ok, it seems everytime I try to do something, there has to be about 96 unproductive hours filled with failed attempts to do even the simplest things, like installing Linux for example. I'll spare everyone the lame details, suffice it to say that, now that everything is hooked up, I have been unable to successfully read a 9-track tape. I can certainly get the tape to do stuff like forward through files, rewind, get the status, etc. using mt. That much works. However, if I try to READ a file, and I've tried this with dd and Eric Smith's tapedump utility and whatnot, it always returns with 0 files read. It apparently sees the file marks as it will say its reading file 1, file 2, etc., but it never actually dumps anything. I've tried the multiple tapes at multiple densities and they are tapes I've read before on another system. WTF??? -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]