Thank you for the really quick answer. I did not know that java 1.5 was already included in the original 9.3 distro. I have added a suse mirror ftp site to the install sites and could install java 1.5. But I got a bunch of dependency errors from other packages. Yast asked me to downgrade a lot of packages that already were updated via YOU earlier, or might have been related to the media packages that are available only as updates, or both (?). I have not downgraded but it took me a lot of clicking to check 'ignore conflicts'. I also think it is pretty awkward that the installer wanted to downgrade those packages that it had updated earlier. Anyway thank you for your help, IG
Add the ftp server location to YaST and you will be able to install all of the programs that are on the DVD but not on the CD's. Add to installation source as http source with ftp.suse.com as server and pub/suse/i386/9.3 as the directory. That may help you with installing java-1.5.
-- Ken Schneider