Re:
> When I do a showdev 8, I always get the following:
>  LDEV     AVAIL         OWNERSHIP         VOLID         DEN   ASSOCIATION
>
>     8     AVAIL    (W)                    (Nolabel)     1600
>
> This comes up with a tape loaded or not. I extracted the portion of your

Yes...SHOWDEV is not the answer.  Oh, it will work in many cases...but
it can't detect if the tape was manually ejected (without being used).

IIRC, there was an answer posted some months back, relying on:

   :sysdiag
   run scsidds; ldev=8; section=50

You'll see:

   ...
   Checking if tape loaded in drive....
                                   .... Tape loaded
   ...

or:

    Checking if tape loaded in drive....
                                   .... No Tape loaded
    ...

Now...can you automate this?  With difficulty, and the tecnhique
is beyond the bounds of easy/quick answers, partially because of
bugs/limitations in sysdiag on various releases of MPE/iX.

And, the worst part is: you need to have a password to access
this diagnostic, despite the public statements to the contrary
by the now-departed-from-HP Rich Sevcik!  Contact HPRC to get
a password, or get one online from the HP ESC web site.

--
Stan Sieler                                          [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.allegro.com/sieler.html