read or write to /dev/fd hangs system

[Earl H. Kinmonth]

I am running SCO Xenix 2.2 on an ATT 6310 (Olivetti AT). Both home brew
and system programs that try io operations to any of the /dev/fd (not
/dev/rfd) device files lock the system if there is some error on the
device (write protect, door open, bad floppy), etc.

When I say errors lock the system, I mean they lock the system. A kill
-9 is ignored, pulling the plug on the drive, etc. do nothing. I just
get a stream of device errors.

Is this "normal" behavior in the sense that it is a general bug, or is
it one specific to my configuration?

Does anyone have a work around? When this problem occurs, this is no
error return from the associated read() or write().

Using O_SYNCW with open() seems to result in a proper error return but
also seems to result in slower io operations.