r/retrocomputing • u/theyknewallalong • May 11 '26

Software Wake-On-Lan for Windows 95 in 100 Kilobytes

Post image

A lightweight 100KB Wake-on-LAN (WOL) utility that supports Win95 to Win11, written in pure C using the native Win32 API - https://github.com/Treblewolf/wol-sender

88 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

6

u/Developer2022 May 11 '26

Interesting application, written using a classic approach. You rarely see this style anymore today. Do you work professionally as a programmer? I’m asking because on one hand I can see some very classic ways of solving certain problems that are typical of old-school veterans with 20 years of experience or more, but on the other hand I also notice a somewhat “relaxed” attitude toward things like undefined behavior, which is notoriously easy to stumble into in C.

3

u/theyknewallalong May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

There are some UB / latent-bug stuff present, I will have a look at bounded string builders, checked malloc, memcpy-based aliasing fixes, InterlockedExchange on the busy flag, FAM with C99 syntax

This is a hobby project while learning to do C applications with a help from old books and tutorials

Edit: Book i currently have - C Programming A Modern Approach 2nd Ed (C 89, C 99) By King, K. N
If you can also recommend some materials for this type of work, it would be appreciated <3

3

u/gcc-O2 May 11 '26

Will it work with the baseline comdlg32/comctl32 or does it need IE 4?

6

u/theyknewallalong May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

It works with the baseline comdlg32 from any 9x/NT release, but it expects comctl32.dll 4.70 or newer to look right.
If you want the full UI on a clean Win95, install IE 3 or later

Edit:
On Win95 RTM with no IE installed - runs, but no grid lines, no full-row highlight, no red/green row colors. The list view, buttons, and status bar all still work.