Very Computer

1. accessing /dev/fd0 directly for sector reads/writes

Hi there,

I'm getting into some operating system development, and it would make my
life a lot easier right now if I could use the Linux device drivers for
the time being to format my disks and such.

My question then becomes, how can I use /dev/fd0 directly?  I realise
I'd have to be root, that's no problem.  My understanding would be that
I can just open /dev/fd0 as a file and read and write to it.  I tried
this, but had some troubles.  I think I was reading correctly, but not
writting.

I know a "cat /dev/fd0" will give me the contents of the disk, so it
obviously acts as if it's a file, but it's actually a block device.
Does this mean that "fseek(file, 10, SEEK_SET)" will get me to the 10th
byte, or the 10th block?  If block, how do I find out the size (I'm
assuming it'd be 512 bytes, for a regular disk) of the block?

Any information on this topic would be helpfull.

Thanks,
Jeff

PS: Please respond via email if possible.

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