yes, it is possible to read and write informations in AD but you must have DS client installed on your workstations because it is this client that implement LDAP objects.

in my company, we have more than 3000 NT 4 workstations in an AD domain. DS client has been installed before migration to AD and there is no problem.

I have several scripts the export AD data every night. The script was developped and tested on my NT 4 workstation.
For speed, they are now running directly on a GC.

I am not sure but it seems you need kix 4.22 to write in AD because of a problem with the "put" method in older versions.
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Christophe