Hi Willem,
The standard stuff like mt -f /dev/ht0 status etc etc works. But tar doesn't wan't to-do backups anymore both with and witout the patch on a 2.6.0 kernel. I don't have a 2.4.x kernel handy to test if it still works with those kernels and my drive.
What I've done is the following:
bash-2.05# tar -cvb 64 -f /dev/ht0 /
tar: Removing leading `/' from absolute path names in the archive
lost+found/
usr/
usr/X11
usr/adm
usr/bin/
usr/bin/w
usr/bin/ar
tar: Cannot write to /dev/ht0: Invalid argument
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
It looks as if the backup starts but it almost immediatly ends after the drive does some spinning and reading and or writing.