diff --git a/urjtag/configure.ac b/urjtag/configure.ac
index e8cdf8e7..d38831b5 100644
--- a/urjtag/configure.ac
+++ b/urjtag/configure.ac
@@ -148,6 +148,10 @@ AC_CHECK_HEADERS(m4_flatten([
 	sys/wait.h
 ]))
 
+AC_CHECK_TYPE([wchar_t], [],
+	[AC_DEFINE([wchar_t], [char], [Make sure we have wchar_t])],
+	[#include <stddef.h>])
+
 dnl See if the windows target is polluting the namespace on us which
 dnl will break some of the lex/yacc (e.g. bsdl) builds.  We need both
 dnl defines as some versions of mingw have changed names over time.
diff --git a/urjtag/src/cmd/cmd_print.c b/urjtag/src/cmd/cmd_print.c
index 9dff05b0..61bef768 100644
--- a/urjtag/src/cmd/cmd_print.c
+++ b/urjtag/src/cmd/cmd_print.c
@@ -31,7 +31,6 @@
 #ifdef HAVE_WCHAR_H
 #include <wchar.h>
 #else
-typedef char wchar_t;
 # define mbstowcs(dst,src,n) 0
 # define wcslen(str) strlen(str)
 #endif