[derefr]

The parent commentor is probably talking about, in this case, wanting to know what would be required to write their own “external” tape drive firmware/driver, to post-decode an analogue flux reading (ala https://applesaucefdc.com/) of an LTO tape into the same digital data-stream that the drive itself would output. I.e., what would be required to write an “LTO tape drive emulator” to interface with hardware/drivers that expect to be talking to an LTO drive (perhaps in the context of emulating that software itself.)