The tc driver under A/UX is limited to reading 8K blocks, so in order for tapes created on other UNIX systems to be read under A/UX the tapes must be created with this block factor. For example, if tapes created on a Hewlett Packard (HP) workstation do not specify an 8K block factor, an AWS 95 will not be able to read these tapes.
In the past, we have successfully create tapes on other UNIX systems using the following command:
tar -cvf - . | dd of=/dev/rmt/tc2 obs=8kx40 (to create the archive)
Used the following command on the AWS 95 to read the tapes:
dd if=/dev/rmt/tc2 ibs=8kx40 | tar -xvf - (to read the archive)