James wrote:
> tar /dev/ldev8 /C2/DATA02/SNFSTUFF

Maybe you meant tar cf /dev/ldev8 /C2/DATA02/SNFSTUFF
                    ^^

The 'f' option says that the next token is the name of the file to write
to.  The usual behavior of tar is to write to the system default tape
device (which must have been ldev 7).  Since the /dev/ldef8 was not
preceded by the f option, it would be taken as one of the files to
archive.

So my guess is that you tried to archive ldev 8 to ldev 7 :-)

It read a block on ldev 8, then tried to write it to ldev 7, then
went back to read a block from ldev 8 again...

If this is what happened then I'm a little surprised since I didn't know
MPE tar was smart enough to target ldev 7 (or TAPE?) if no 'f'ile was
specified.

G.