You need a newer version of ncurses to build ntape. 
With version 1.8.5 of ncurses it is known to build without
problems (my development version). But it should also work with 1.8.1.
Don't use ncurses 1.9.0 (broke some scrolling code). 1.9.1 seems fine
again.
You need a tar that supports the -T option (e.g. gnu tar 1.11.2).
Archives are currently stored with tar cpT filelist.

To install ntape properly you should go through the following steps:
0. To compile ntape do
   (a) Edit the Makefile (especially BINDIR and MANDIR where the
       binary and the manpage should go).
       You should have a look at the defines DEBUG, OFFLINE and 
       WRITE_PROTECTED, too. But there's no need to remove the
       comments at the first time, only if you have problems with
       ntape, e.g. with wrong messages such as "Tape is offline" or
       "Tape is write protected".
   (b) Do
	make clean; make depend; make install
1. Set the environment variable TAPE to the appropiate device.
   Suggestion : export TAPE=/dev/tape
		ln -sf /dev/nrmt0 /dev/tape or
		ln -sf /dev/st0 /dev/tape or something similar.
   For colored ncurses applications you must set
		TERM=console
   For newer ncurses (at least with 1.8.7)  and kernel versions (1.3.3
   and above) you must set
		TERM=linux
   ntape works great with color-xterm, too. But don't forget to set
   TERM as above.
2. Edit the DATABASEPATH variable in Install.sh, then do
	sh Install.sh
3. Edit ~/.ntaperc
4. GO!!
