$100 would get you an hour and a half of a good contractor's time in the UK. What on earth do you expect to get done in that time? Engineers are expensive - pay peanuts, get monkeys as the saying goes.
"Good"? I've exchanged a handful of emails for more than that...
I guess I picked the right major after all, but, sheesh?
...Is programming really that bad paying? I'm sure my software friends aren't getting that lowballed. Or... but, surely corporate doesn't just randomly pay 5 times more than they need to, right?
Like, offhand I'd guess spending a solid day (8hr, easily $500-1000) doing what Peter is looking for, granted I don't work in that particular field (networking, win32 devices) and haven't seen the precise spec. And that's if you can find someone with that exact experience. Lacking that, maybe figure triple the time, for having to look up all the APIs, rediscover their pitfalls, collect enough devices to put together some manner of testing (I mean, VCPs and such should be pretty generic, but give or take scope, and weirdness, and worst cases and all, y'know--?). Which, personally, being familiar with the language but hardly anything on the APIs, would be about all I could do for example, and, I guess Peter is in a similar position. That's going to be true of a lot of other people as well, and to find otherwise will be relatively rare (like, < 1/10th the pool we're in, kind of a thing?). And, basic economic principles, y'know, would at least seem to suggest...that's worth some kind of premium?
So, if your time's not worth that much, just read up on it all and do it yourself. Maybe you can find a contractor in a low-CoL country that's slam-dunk ready to go skilled, and maybe you can get it done for a pittance (or, maybe it doesn't work at all, and much back-and-forth is required..), but clearly it's not worth spending several days searching for that. Then it's a matter of, if you have a pressing need (or equivalently, the opportunity cost of needing to work on other things and not be distracted by all this searching and managing), how much can be budgeted for it, and if it covers a competent subject-matter expert, well, that's good value, and if not, then sucks but that's how it is. Right..?
Tim