Note: you must have JBuilder installed to use TiniTools. JBuilder is extensible in the sense that you can create additional functionality for it, and TiniTools is one example. TiniTools was written by Brad Clements of MurkWorks. (Send him an email thanking him and maybe he'll continue to enhance it.) TiniTools are not a Dallas product and they are not included in the Dallas TINI firmware. You need to get them from MurkWorks.

When you program TINI you need to perform several steps each time you want to change and run a program. Without TiniTools, or some equivalent, you could find yourself doing the following dozens of times in a day:

1. Edit .java files
2. compile .java files to .class file
3. convert.class file to .tini file
4. open ftp session to transfer .tini file to your TINI system
5. type in the IP address and operations to actually transfer the file via ftp
6. open a telnet session to communicate with TINI and test your program
7. type in the IP address and operations to actually connect and use the telnet session
8. repeat all the above until you feel like a monkey in a lab experiment. Where are my peanuts for doing all the above correctly for the umpteenth time

There has to be a better way than all this manual data entry. Script files help some but then you are constantly writing and maintaining them. TiniTools to the rescue! TiniTools makes the TINI compile -> convert -> download->test cycle easier by automating a lot of the above steps. Here's the TiniTools version of the above:

1. Edit .java files
2. compile .java files to .class file. TiniTools automatically converts the .class file to a .tini file, opens an ftp session to transfer .tini file to your TINI system, does all the transfer operations, opens a telnet session to communicate with TINI, at your TINI's IP address and awaits your command
3. type in the operations to actually test your program
4. repeat the above with just a couple of mouse clicks.

Aim your browser at ftp://ftp.murkworks.com/FREEBIES/TINI/ and download both TiniTools.jar and README.TXT, saving them in a backup folder on your computer. (Index.htm is a short page describing what the files are.)

Read the readme.txt file.

If you use JBuilder, change the JBuilder35\bin\jdk.config file to refer to tini.jar. If you don't do this, TiniTools' Tini Convert will hang, waiting forever because it was not properly intialized when JBuilder started up. You need to add the line "addpath d:/tini1.0/tini.jar" as seen below, the additions are in red.

# +-----------------------------------------------------+
# | |
# | This is the shared configuration file for the |
# | Win32 JDK |
# | |
# | Do NOT make modifications without maintaining a |
# | backup copy. See README.txt for a description of |
# | the recognized directives. |
# | |
# +-----------------------------------------------------+

# Use the embedded JDK provided with JBuilder Foundation
javapath ../jdk1.2.2/bin/java

# Add JPDA and the "tools" JAR to the path since the JDK
# doesn't do so automatically
addpath ../jdk1.2.2/lib/jpda.jar
addpath ../jdk1.2.2/lib/tools.jar
# tini.jar must be here to permit calling convert from tinitools
addpath d:/tini1.0/tini.jar

Close and restart JBuilder after this change, since JBuilder only reads this file on startup.

You also need to change the "required libraries" configuration in JBuilder to point to the tiniclasses.jar and tini.jar files. This is in the JBuilder Project -> Default Project Properties menu. Click Add, and give the Tini libraries some name such as "tini api from Dallas", then browse and add tiniclasses.jar and tiniapi.jar.

Note: the default project properties apply only to new JBuilder projects. If you want the Tini api to be added to an existing JBuilder project, you need to follow a similar procedure but in the "Project Properties" menu.

There's another gotcha with TiniTools. The first time I tried a Tini Convert with TINI 1.0, here's what happened:

TiniTools currently is hard-coded to look for tini.db in that folder under tini1.0, so create the folder "firmware" it and copy tini.db into it. Then TINI convert should work. Be sure you copy tini.db, not move it, so that other tools which need it in the bin folder can still find it.