Ignite restore failing

[Denise Borgen]

B2600, with HPUX 11.11

Have tried 3 different B2600 cpus,  and using a fresh ignite image and two  ignites that have been successful previously.  Tape  seems to work until it tries to start reading  the archives, at first we got an error:

pax_ui: does not appear to be a tar archive   ( may not be exact but close)

Last try, it seemed to be working, it took a lot longer to error out  and then it rebooted and  we got :

INI C740: initialize other path

Booting...

Boot IO dependent Code ( IODC) revision 0

INI C780: load IPL ither path  ( This repeats over a dozen time.)

Obviously we are working with refurbished parts but does this point in any particular direction?