Oh wise and depthful vat of HP3000 (& -related) knowledge:
Rumour (am I british? I mean 'rumor') has it that DDS3 drives can read DDS2
tapes and if a DDS2 tape is in the drive when a DDS3 drive is writing to that
drive, the DDS2 tape can then be read by some other DDS2 drive.
All of this with no software or hardware config, just using the correct tape.
Truth?
TIA,
Steve