I shall perform necromancy and raise this thread from the dead, for the sake of anyone else lead to this answer by an internet search.

The problem is was that ASE was used to try to do the restore/load, but it was not the backup of an ASE database.

The clue is in the question where it talks about "dbbackup" used to take the backup. That's not an SAP ASE command.

It is an SAP ASA (Adaptive Server Anywhere) command. Two different products, doomed to failure. "You can't get there from here."

ASE is quite reasonably complaining that what's asked to load isn't an ASE database. Use ASA to restore an ASA backup.