HELP!!! Creating JDBC connections is dog slow

I have a local Oracle 8.05 database, and I am running a Java program (JDK 1.1.8) that does nothing but create 10 connections to this database. As the database is local, there is no network communication needed at all for this operation. I am running on a PII450 w/320MB RAM, with an NT Enterprise Server 4.0 operating system. I am using the thin jdbc driver. No matter what changes I make, it takes 880-1000ms per connection! In other words, to open up my 10 connections takes between 8-10 seconds. I have tried nearly everything to solve this problem, from downloading the latest JDBC driver, to ripping out all of my code except that which just creates connections, to uninstalling and completely reinstalling Oracle alltogether. Does anyone have a clue as to what to try? Others who have ran my code in other environments are connecting in around 100ms. TNSPING80 on my own box is returning successfully in 30ms. If you want to run the code yourself, here it is below. PLEASE HELP!!! Thanks in advance. public static void main (String args []) throws SQLException {

 DriverManager.registerDriver(new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver());  long l;
 for (int i=1; i <= 10; i++)
 {
  l = System.currentTimeMillis();
  DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:oracle:thin:@<IP Address>:1521:<SID>","<username>","<password>");   /* I am 100% positive the above line does open a connection */   System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - l);  }

}

Here was the output:

952
892
890
890
933
880
963
881
912
905 Received on Tue Nov 30 1999 - 11:43:59 CST