Happy 19th anniversary to freecupholder.exe
this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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It was actually quite simple from what i remember. There was a plain winapi call to control multimedia devices, the mmc api. You could send a control string to the device, such as eject, play or seek. So in maybe 4 lines of C code, this could be written.
Disclaimer: All info from the top of my head based on knowledge from 20 years ago, so take it as it is.
That sounds about right for 4 lines of code to make the call itself. But I remember using VC++ and since everything was a GUI you’d create a project which gave you a bunch of template generated code with all the MFC and WinAPI libs and frameworks…
You had the option. You could create a fullblown mfc application (in a couple of variants such as single document, multiple document and dialog based), but also a barebones plain winapi one. And a for a DLL too. I miss those simpler times of winapi coding, i found it fun. I moved away from windows as an OS around the time .Net 2.0 was released. Now when I look at modern windows development, I recognise absolutely NOTHING lol. Does winapi even exist still under all those layers?