ide tape drive not working

[Justin Rush]

Hi,
  I am getting a strange error while trying to use my ide-tape drive in 
kernel 2.4.20-18.9.  In dmesg I see that the kernel sees the tape drive: 
hdf: Seagate STT8000A, ATAPI TAPE drive
ide-tape: hdf <-> ht0: Seagate STT8000A rev 5.02
ide-tape: hdf <-> ht0: 600KBps, 14*26kB buffer, 5850kB pipeline, 80ms 
tDSC, DMA
However, when I try and do a mt -f /dev/ht0 status , I get a device or 
resource busy error, and the following gets spit into dmesg:
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 34, key =  3, asc = 30, ascq =  0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc =  1, key =  3, asc = 30, ascq =  0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc =  0, key =  3, asc = 30, ascq =  0
ide-tape: ht0: drive not ready

What could be the problem here?

Thanks,
Justin