need help running beans in jsp with GNUJSP

[Jeremy Conner]

All I am trying to do is get a bean to work in a JSP.
I am using Apache 1.3.3, ApacheJserv 1.0b1, GNUJSP 0.9.7, JDK1.2
and unfortunately Win NT 4.0.

I am using the tags from ref .91.

ex.
<bean name="db" type="com.infoglide.web.tools.DataBaseBean" introspect="yes" create="yes" scope="session">
</bean>

When I use a class name that does not exist I get a compile time error.
With the above tag I get an error of:

500 JSP run-time error
The JSP page you requested could not be served because the following error(s) occured:
Could not create bean db of type com.infoglide.web.tools.DataBaseBean

This suggests that the JSPServlet could not instantiate my class.
I tried instantiating my class outside of a JSP, in a main method, and received no errors.
When I don't use the bean tag and just write scriplets everything works fine.

Any ideas?
does this have something to do with my classpath?
does the bean have to be in a jar file?