Java Index Page

Garbage Collector Java Garbage

BEDS II

Java SDK: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp
Java API docs: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp
Sun's Java Tutorial: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html

http://exampledepot.com/ The Java Almanac code examples
http://www.java2s.com/ - Java code examples
http://www.leepoint.net/notes-java/index.html Fred Swartz Java code examples
http://chortle.ccsu.edu/java5/cs151java.html Online Java course - very good quality
http://www.particle.kth.se/~lindsey/JavaCourse/Book/courseMap.html Introduction to Scientific and Technical Computing with Java
http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/ David Eck's excellent Java Notes "Introduction to Programming Using Java"
http://java-source.net/ : Open Source Java software
A Java cheat sheet : Handy reference for Java things you won't have to remember anymore!
http://www.confluent.fr/javadoc/indexe.html The Java API documentation in Windows Help Format!

Sun Certification

What you need to know- helpful listing of material you are expected to know

http://www.jchq.net/essentials/index.htm#full

Java Classpath

Lots of problems for new and more experienced users with the classpath. See classpath.html for some info and hopefully it will solve your problems.

Java Serial CommAPI

Update Sept. 2008

Sun have dicontinued support of the Comm API for the Windows platform.
A possible alternative is available at rxtx.org see:

Home page http://www.rxtx.org/
RXTX official WIKI @ http://rxtx.qbang.org/wiki
How to use rxtx from Eclipse @ http://rxtx.qbang.org/wiki/index.php/Using_RXTX_In_Eclipse
Howto for Linux @ http://wass.homelinux.net/howtos/Comm_How-To.shtml

Reference Material

A very good chapter on Java Serial comms is available @ http://www.syngress.com/book_catalog/177_lego_JAVA/sample.htm . This is from the book "Programming Lego Mindstorms With Java" .

Another useful web site is @ http://www.particle.kth.se/~lindsey/JavaCourse/Book/chapter23.html

Problems
I've had some odd problems with the Java CommAPI.

I tried to run apps that were located on a seperate partition (e.g. D:\) but I wasunable to open (or list) ports.
However, if I moved the code to the C:\ drive it worked.
Couldn't gat a port allocated to my apps when I was developing them in Eclipse but outside Eclipse
they ran OK (on thje C:\ drive)

Here are some pointers to a solution that worked for me.
[Running Win2K and [JDK] represent the directory path to the Java Development Kit eg [JDK] == c:\jdk1.4.1\]

Synopsis [For a full version with explanations see here]
(1)
    Make sure that the PATH environment variable is written such that the '<JDK>\bin'directory is before the
    'c:\WINNT\system' directory [This means that you know that this is the version of java that runs and not
    'java.exe' in c:\WINNT\system]
(2)
    In development (i.e. college) useful jar archives or java classes can be placed in the [JDK]\jre\lib\ext directory.
    This is atomatically searched by '<JDK>\bin\java.exe' before (!) any other location, even before those classes
    specified using the CLASSPATH environment variable or using the '-classpath' switch
(3)
    For production code to be really sure that you will see the required classes use the '-classpath' switch when running the JVM
    java –classpath C:\myapps\proj1\ MyApp
(4)
    For the CommAPI (Please note these are not the same as Sun's recommendations ... but it works :) )
    (i)
        extract the ziped file you downloaded from Sun into some directory. Then find the files comm.jar, win32com.dll
        and javax.comm.properties
    (ii)
            Copy the file 'win32com.dll' to the [JDK]\bin directory.
    (iii)
            Copy 'comm.jar' to [JDK]\jre\lib\ext directory
    (iv)
            Copy the file 'javax.comm.properties' to the directory [JDK]\jre\lib.

I also found the folowing at the Java Tech site [Note they do not install to the <JDK>/lib or <JDK>/bin directories at all! ]

Installing javax.comm

The J2SE installation does not include the javax.comm set of files. You must download and install it separately. The Sun Java Communications site currently provides files suitable for Windows platforms and Solaris. See the resources section below for links to sites that provide javax.comm for Linux .

For example, for MS Windows follow this procedure:

Download and unpack the javacomm20-win32.zip file.
Place the win32com.dll in j2sdk1.4.2\jre\bin directory (or the \jre\bin subdirectory of your current J2SDK directory.)
Place the comm.jar in \jre\lib\ext.
Place the javax.comm.properties in \jre\lib.
Do not alter the CLASSPATH.

TOMCAT Setup

My experience of setting up the TOMCAT servlet container on a Windows 2000 system available here. It also has details of how you subsequently deploy your servlets.
Marty Hall (author of Servlets and Java Server Pages, Core) has a lot of detail on setting up version 3.2 of Tomcat here.

DOS Batch Files

A good introduction and advanced tutorial from Cay Horstmann is available. The intro gives you some basic info and the advanced shows you how to write batch files [a usefull skill]:

Intro: http://horstmann.com/bigj/help/windows/tutorial.html
Advanced: http://horstmann.com/bigj/help/windows/advanced.html

Other