IDE tape suddenly stopped operating, any suggestions?

[yas oberon it swin edu au]

	Dear All,

	I was using happily my Seagate 8 MB (compressed) IDE tape
for my backups until today. The tape stopped operating. Now I get
these messages (in /var/log/messages) to the command 

	mt -f /dev/ht0 status

Feb  1 16:50:51 oberon kernel: ide-tape: hdb <-> ht0, 600KBps, 14*26kB buffer, 2600kB pipeline, 190ms tDSC 
Feb  1 16:50:51 oberon kernel: ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 34, key =  2, asc = 3a, ascq =  0 
Feb  1 16:50:51 oberon kernel: ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc =  1, key =  2, asc = 3a, ascq =  0 
Feb  1 16:50:51 oberon kernel: ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 34, key =  2, asc = 3a, ascq =  0 
Feb  1 16:50:51 oberon kernel: ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc =  1, key =  2, asc = 3a, ascq =  0 

	What would be the reason? Any help will be much appreciated...

	I am using Redhat 6.0 kernel version 2.2.5-22.

--
Ahmet Sekercioglu (ASekerci ieee org)