From: utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: hacknews
Title: tape(1) rewind handling improved 
Article-I.D.: utzoo.2166
Posted: Mon Jun 14 17:23:22 1982
Received: Mon Jun 14 17:23:22 1982

Fixed tape(1) to explicitly check whether the tape device is openable
before it fires up tar.  If it's not, tape now produces a reasonably
intelligible message, mentioning the possibility that the tape is still
rewinding (the usual cause of unopenability).