CS101 Survival Kit is a program that lets you work on your CS101 labs using (virtually) the same software in the CEC lab.

In addition, it includes software that lets you Telnet to CEC and print your labs using a standard Windows-compatible printer.

First, you need a copy of the Java 1.4.0_01 JDK. For legal reasons, I can't include it with the CS101 Survival Kit. But you can download it for free from this page.

(You're going to want the SDK for Windows, all languages. Right now, it's under the heading "Download J2SE v 1.4.0_01", and it's the first available link in the "SDK" column, but Sun likes to move things around on their Web pages a lot, so don't be surprised if it's somewhere else on the page by the time you read this. After selecting this, it's going to make you accept a license agreement before it lets you download the file. Once you agree to the license agreement, it'll finally give you a download link. But you might want to pick the US Central server from the drop-down list before you click the download link, since it'll be a little faster than the others.)

If you're not doing this from Washington University's campus, this is going to take a while. A long while. You might want to consider getting dinner. (Fortunately, you only have to do this once!) If you're stuck on a dialup modem, the download will probably be pretty painful; you should probably consider asking a friend on the Washington University campus who has a CD burner to download it for you.

Once your computer has finished downloading the Java 1.4.0_01 JDK, run it by double-clicking on its icon. (It's probably on your desktop.) You'll be asked a bunch of questions; if you don't know the answers, just click the "Next" button and you should be fine. Once it's done, you can delete that file (or back it up somewhere so you don't have re-download it every time you reinstall Windows!) and then come back here and download the CS101 Survival Kit.

Next, you need to download a copy of the CS101 Survival Kit.

Click here to download it.

If you're not at the Washington University campus, this is going to take a while too. Not as long a time as the last step, but still a while. If you finished dinner, now's the time to go out for dessert, or to buy a thank-you gift for your on-campus friend with a CD burner.

Now run this program by double-clicking on the CS101 icon, which is also probably on your desktop. There'll be a couple of options, but for most people there's really no reason not to use the default settings. Once it's done, you can delete this file too.

You should now have a "CS101 Survival Kit" section under Programs on the Start menu with a few familiar-looking programs. The only real difference between these programs and the ones at CEC is that these programs save the stuff you do to your computer, so you won't be able to use the stuff you write at home in the CEC labs unless you save your files on a floppy disk, or copy your stuff onto CEC's computers. ¹ (Don't keep your only copy of your labs on a floppy disk, though: they're very fragile, and you don't want to lose a whole semester's worth of work if your disk goes bad!)

Note that you do not store your labs directly in your CS101 folder -- there is a folder called Data inside the CS101 folder, which is where the labs should go. You can also get to it by picking "My CS101 Data" from the CS101 Survival Kit group on your Start Menu. If you try to store your labs directly in the CS101 folder, it probably won't compile.

(If you don't care where the CS101 Survival Kit or JDK go, then just stick with the defaults, and ignore this section.)

You now have the option of installing the CS101 Survival Kit in a different location. However, installing the kit in a directory that contains any spaces is highly unrecommended, because it may cause Emacs and the JDK to behave unpredictably.

Likewise, if you want to put the JDK in a directory other than c:\j2sdk1.4.0_01, there is now a checkbox labeled "Use a different JDK location" in the Setup program. If you select it and click the "Next" button, then you will be asked to find the JDK's directory. It is also not recommended to install the JDK in a directory that contains any spaces. Note that this step does not actually install the JDK for you; it will just set up Jikes and Emacs to point at a copy of the JDK that you've already got installed.

Just one thing. Since the program that the CEC lab uses to Telnet to Clarion, Hilton, and Ritz isn't free, I had to use a substitute program called PuTTY. There's not much of a difference between PuTTY and what CEC uses, but the first time you use it to connect to one of the computers, you'll probably get a really strange warning, which looks something like this:

This is just because PuTTY's paranoid about the first time you connect to any computer, and it wants to make absolutely sure you mean it. Just click the Yes button and it probably won't ask you again.

First, make sure you download and install the Java JDK 1.4.0_01 before the CS101 Survival Kit. The CS101 Survival Kit won't work without it. If you forgot to do that, look at the "What do I need?" section above. It won't work if you use a different JDK version, either; it must be version 1.4.0_01. ²

Likewise, Sun offers two different downloads on the same page: the Java SDK (aka JDK) and the Java Runtime Environment (aka JRE). The JRE is a smaller version of the JDK that can run Java programs but not compile them. If you download the JRE instead of the JDK, it won't work with the CS101 Survival Kit.

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If you're getting an error that says

Error: Could not find package "canvas" in:
c:/j2sdk1.4.0_01/jre/lib/rt.jar
c:/cs101
c:/

when you try to compile, then you're probably putting your lab files in somewhere unexpected. Just move the Canvas folder from C:\CS101\data to where-ever you're storing your labs, and should work. (Or, better yet, unzip this copy of Canvas to where-ever you're storing your labs; it's got a couple of bug fixes.) ³

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If you're having some other kind of problem, send me an E-mail at gwh2@cec.wustl.edu or talk to me at one of the CS101 labs and I'll see what I can do. Or, better yet, post a message in the CS101 Newsgroup, since it's possible somebody else has had the same problem. Please be specific; copy-and-paste any relevant error messages. I usually can't help you without a copy of the error messages. And please don't E-mail or IM the other CS101 TAs, because they'll just have to end up forwarding the message to me.

The software and information provided here should be used at your own risk. It is not designed to do anything bad to your computer, and there's no reason it should, but neither Greg Hackmann nor Washington University will be held responsible if anything bad does happen.