LinuxQuestions.org - Onstream ADR tape drive device missing

I've installed an Onstream ADR 30GB IDE tape drive in my Mandrake 10.1 system. When I first installed it was assigned /dev/hdc. At that time, I didn't have any cartridges to test it with, so I left it at that.

Once I acquired a cartridge, I wanted to test the drive. To my surprise, there was no /dev/hdc device anymore! Only my hda, hdb and hdd (HD, HD and CD) devices appeared under /dev. Nor could I find the device listed under /proc (It should be /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target0/lun0/<something>).

The Mandrake Control Centre shows a tape drive, but all the information it gives is:

Identification
Media class: ‎tape

Connection
Bus: ‎ide

Device ID: ‎0

Misc
Old device file: ‎/dev/hdc

Disk controller: ‎0

I checked dmesg, and it does show the device being detected:

Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: OnStream DI-30, ATAPI TAPE drive

So what's going on? Why did the device disappear and how can I recreate it (and keep it from disappearing again)? Does anyone know the mknod settings for this drive?

NB: I rebooted after the intial installation and I also modified my /etc/fstab. When I first put the Onstream drive in, my fstab was modified so that /dev/hdc mounted to /mnt/cdrom and /dev/hdd mounted to /mnt/cdrom2. Since /dev/hdc wasn't a CD, I took this line out. Perhaps that was what inspired the system to drop the device entirely? I tried disconnecting the device, powering up, powering down, reconnecting the device and powering up to get the line rebuilt, but that didn't work. Fstab stayed as I'd left it.)