the jar file mysql-connector-java-3.0.9-stable-bin.jar i had put in
C:\jdk1.3.1_01\jre\lib\ext immediately after dowloading the driver.
When i tried also to include set CLASSPATH=c:\jdk1.3.1_01\jre\lib\ext
into my autoexec.bat (windows 98) i just got this:
C:\jdk1.3.1_01\bin>javac testconnj.java

C:\jdk1.3.1_01\bin>java testconnj
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: testconnj

Then i took this off from autoexec.bat again and just left the jar
file in the jdk1.3.1_01\jre\lib\ext directory and got the previous
error shown in my previous posted message