Messing with these will be most likely to get my attention if I'm sitting at the table. After you press a button, the command will be executed on the remote computer ('Pepperoni'), if that computer is up.
Warning: if you press 'cat', some of the content displayed might not be suitable for family viewing - or for any viewing, by anybody..
Certain browsers will not refresh the screen until the command is complete. After the command has finished, any output - and the total time taken for that command to be executed - will be displayed (I'll send you the bill for CPU usage later - haha.. only kidding). For commands like 'retension', the tape takes some time to wind, so please be patient.
If the 'status' command returns '-1' for 'file number' and 'block number', that typically means that the tape isn't loaded.
Any abuse of this facility will result in me going into a deep sulk.
The 'tapecontrol' scripts are downloadable as a .tar.gz file if you want to have a look at them.