For those who had not noted...

There have been some updates to Slack/390 yesterday and today (-current and -stable).

If you search in this forum you can find a thread where I posted about how I installed Slack/390 on the Hercules emulator, running on top of Slackware 12

Good to see that the only official port of Slackware is still alive!

Yeah, I remember that thread. I was trying out old Slackware versions (3.5 and 8.1) with Qemu, but I chickened out of trying 390 with Hercules.

I put a series of 11 posts on my blog, showing step-by-step instructions on how to install Hercules and Slack/390. Nothing to be afraid of!

I read them, or skimmed through them, at the time. Very interesting, but I thought at that time it would be biting off more than I could chew. I was more interested in trying older versions of Slackware ( and other distros ), rather than other architectures. I was, in a way, making up for my late developing interest in computers.
I will read those articles again though.

Well, I've got the Hercules emulator installed. I used src2pkg on the latest source. I'm not sure about emulating Slackware/390 though. Is it any different to using the Slackware I'm using now?

It is *very* alike the Slackware you use everyday, without the GUI of course... Almost all configuration is done in the same way.

I would want to try different distros and/or architectures with an emulator. I think Debian 390 is the only other readily available distro.

Mmmm, on second thoughts, Slackware would be preferable to Debian (which I've just got rid of off my laptop because I'd got bored with it). So I'll read your blog again and maybe give Slack/390 a try. Bite the bullet, as they say.

Debian works under Hercules - I installed it some time ago and it worked just fine.
There are some how-to's on the internet (just check Google).

For the S/390 platform you can also find RedHat (*), Suse (*) and I read about OpenSolaris if you're in for something quite different. And then there is a "Marist College" distribution (I think that was the name) - the first port of Linux to the S/390.
(*) these are commercial distros, but there might be 'open' versions available - never checked it out.

And hey, you can always install MVS or z/OS on it to have a *very* different experience

Yes. There's some intriguing stuff on this page:
http://www.ibiblio.org/jmaynard/

Yeah, I know this page... I actually got MVS working on the emulator, but I forgot almost everything from the old days.

I'll stick to Slack/390 - I'm much more comfortable with it

I think I'd be trying to run before I could walk with that MVT and MVS stuff. There's one on that page that's a complete, ready-made, system with plenty of documentation - I might just download it, unzip it, and have a glance at the docs.