This is what we have the readb and writeb variants for. Do some minor
return value and variable cleanup while at it.

Cc: Manasi Navare <manasi.d.navare@intel.com>
Cc: Ville Syrjälä <ville.syrjala@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: NManasi Navare <manasi.d.navare@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: NJani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com>
Link: http://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/msgid/fd8a8f110bcfdc73a8c9241e5f9d61f7dd7c9677.1491485983.git.jani.nikula@intel.com