Kennedy 9600 9-track w/DQ132 on mVAX-II??

I have a MicroVAX-II and I want to add a Kennedy 9600 9 track drive. AFAIK, this drive has a standard Pertec interface and I was planning to use it with a Dilog DQ132 controller. The drive is capable of both 800 and 1600bpi, and I need to be able to use it at both densities. I installed it and cabled it all up - VMS (v4.5 in this case) sees the DQ132 and autoconfigures it as MSA0 (a good sign!), and the drive seems happy and loads a tape. VMS reports that MSA0 is a TSV05 (which is what I'd expect) and doesn't log any errors. But, whenever I try to access the drive, VMS says that it's offline and I can't get it to actually do anything. Yes, the Kennedy is actually online (the online LED is lit) and the "select" LED on the drive flickers for an instant when VMS tries to access the drive. The drive is set as unit 0, and it was working the last time it was used (with an Emulex controller in that instance). Just for fun, I tried the Kennedy drive with a real TSV05 (M7196) controller that's known to work with a real TSV05 drive - same results. Is there any obvious reason why this wouldn't work? The 9600 is Pertec, right? If you Google for this drive you'll find a couple of places that say it's SCSI, but that seems wrong. Anybody got a manual for the 9600? Bitsavers has the manual for the 9610, but it appears that the 9600 is substantially different. Thanks, Bob Armstrong