How do I read a bad tape (tar) ?

[Sunil]

>I am having trouble extracting some important data from a cartridge tape.
>I used tar and now can not retrieve the data.  The tape drive whirrs and
>clicks a couple of times and then the system tells me to insert the next
>tape and press <CR> to continue.  I know the data is on the tape - it justs
>seems that there is a little snag that makes the system think it's
>reached the end of the archive.  Question - is there anyway way of retrieving
>the data (whatever is left of it) by either:
>
	We had  exactly same problem in reading cartridges from different
systems ... we solved the problem as follows --

	read the cartridge using 'dd', then use tar on the output file
	created by dd.

	% dd if=/dev/sq0 of=outfile conv=swab
	% tar -xvf outfile


	Hope this helps ...

__
Sunil Kulkarni
Computer Div.
pki at shakti.ernet.in