I've got amanda running on one machine and it seems to be running fine.

I've got another server (Dell 2500) Dual 1.1g 512k cache.

Raid card (Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x)

DLT Drive BNCHMARK Model DLT1

I've got about 28Gig used.  It was taking about 4.5 hours before it started
to write to tape and about 3.5 hours to write to tape.  I'm trying to dump
ArcServeIT by CA.  ArcserveIT can write all of the data in less than 2
hours, but I'd rather use amanda (like I am on the other servers) ... if i
can get it to a "better" time usage and without overloading the machine.  It
is currently running the load up to around 4.   I'd appreciate any ideas on
settings I may have incorrect.

Here are some of my conf settings:

inparallel 2
dumporder  "sssS"
netusage 1500Kbps
dumpcycle 1 day
runspercycle 5
tapecycle 1 tapes
bumpsize 20Mb
bumpdays 1
bumpmult 4
etimeout 300
dtimeout 1800
ctimeout 40
tapebufs 20
runtapes 1
tapedev "/dev/nst0"
tapetype DLT

holding disk is "use 500Mb, chunksize 1GB"

define tapetype DLT {
  comment "DLT tape drives"
  length 40000 mbytes
  filemark 8000 kbytes
  speed 1536 kbytes
}

dumptype is always-full with compress none, priority medium