It brings the following improvements:

• New Image tool bar with actions similar to the Linux console panel
• New improved, bigger status bar with CPU selector
• If a suspend file is found, an option to resume is offered

Here is a screenshot of the new version, running the standard Hercules setup and my Slack/390 installation simultaneously:

The two virtual machines are shown as tabs and you can easily switch between them.

The updated SlackBuild script has been submitted to SlackBuild.org and pre-built versions for Slackware and Slackware64 are available on my site.

• viewvc + Pygments (browser interface for cvs and svn)
• xspacewarp (Time-Trek like game for X-Windows)
• inadyn (Dynamic DNS updater)
• nagios + nagios-plugins (IT monitoring system)
• ntop + GeoIP + graphviz (Network usage monitor)
• zabbix-server / -agentd / -proxy (Distributed monitoring solution)
• hercules (Mainframe emulator)
• lbench (Multi-thread benchmarking tool)
• nbench (Console benchmarking tool)

This finishes the series of packages I planned to test / run on my ARMedslack system.
I might build other packages in the future, but there are no specific plans at the moment.

It has, apart from some small bug fixes, a few enhancements to the GUI. The one I like most is the ability to click on the tray icon to minimize / maximize the program. I normally use Hercules to run servers I connect to from terminal programs, so this cleans up the desktop with a single click.

Another nice addition is the “gauge” to show the current MIPS instead of the LED display. If you prefer the display, you can use the Preferences to set it as the default.

The new SlackBuild has been submitted and packages are available on my site.

Hebe is described on its homepage as:

Hebe is a new KDE 4.4 front-end GUI for the Hercules z/Arch emulator. It was designed to have a modern look, like the VirtualBox interface; there are no dials! Hebe provides two consoles, one for Hercules and one for the SCP (system control program), AKA, the operating system. Input is automatically routed to the correct receiver. You can start as many instances of Hercules as your hardware can support.

I am not a big KDE fan, but I have all the libraries installed, as they come with Slackware, so the program works fine even under Xfce.

Using the standard cmake-template.SlackBuild, I put together a script in just a couple of minutes, which I submitted to SlackBuilds.org.

The resulting program looks really nice:

One really nice feature is the capability to run several copies of Hercules at the same time through one single interface.

For the inpatient, pre-built packages can be downloaded from my site.

I submitted the new SlackBuild script to SlackBuilds.org and pre-built packages (Slackware 32 & 64-bits + ARMedslack) are available from my site.

I also built Hercules for ARMedslack. I believe the SheevaPlug will be an excellent device for demonstrating Hercules as a “portable mainframe”.

The automated rsync script will update the site over the next few hours.

I used a (quite old) utility called nbench that was originally written in 1995 but still is a simple way to compare how processors perform, emulated or real. And it has a nice advantage that it can be built on x86, s390 and Arm processors without problems.

Here is the result of Slack/390x-11.0 running in Hercules 3.06 with two emulated processors:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)
TEST : Iterations/sec. : Old Index : New Index
 : : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT : 34.476 : 0.88 : 0.29
STRING SORT : 3.012 : 1.35 : 0.21
BITFIELD : 8.3237e+06 : 1.43 : 0.30
FP EMULATION : 2.3056 : 1.11 : 0.26
FOURIER : 70.649 : 0.08 : 0.05
ASSIGNMENT : 0.35083 : 1.33 : 0.35
IDEA : 94.416 : 1.44 : 0.43
HUFFMAN : 34.368 : 0.95 : 0.30
NEURAL NET : 0.10472 : 0.17 : 0.07
LU DECOMPOSITION : 3.5645 : 0.18 : 0.13
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX : 1.194
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.136
Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU : Dual IBM/S390
L2 Cache :
OS : Linux 2.4.33.3
C compiler : gcc version 3.4.6
libc :
MEMORY INDEX : 0.278
INTEGER INDEX : 0.314
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.075
Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.

And here is the result of ArmedSlack running in Qemu:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)
TEST : Iterations/sec. : Old Index : New Index
 : : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT : 199.84 : 5.13 : 1.68
STRING SORT : 22.453 : 10.03 : 1.55
BITFIELD : 9.048e+07 : 15.52 : 3.24
FP EMULATION : 28.281 : 13.57 : 3.13
FOURIER : 139.34 : 0.16 : 0.09
ASSIGNMENT : 4.4836 : 17.06 : 4.43
IDEA : 922.7 : 14.11 : 4.19
HUFFMAN : 322.93 : 8.95 : 2.86
NEURAL NET : 0.26406 : 0.42 : 0.18
LU DECOMPOSITION : 8.8432 : 0.46 : 0.33
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX : 11.288
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.313
Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU :
L2 Cache :
OS : Linux 2.6.32.7-versatile
C compiler : gcc version 4.4.3 (GCC)
libc : libc-2.11.1.so
MEMORY INDEX : 2.814
INTEGER INDEX : 2.819
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.174
Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.

And finally, my host system where Hercules and Qemu run:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)
TEST : Iterations/sec. : Old Index : New Index
 : : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT : 1339.8 : 34.36 : 11.28
STRING SORT : 282.56 : 126.26 : 19.54
BITFIELD : 5.6507e+08 : 96.93 : 20.25
FP EMULATION : 186.88 : 89.67 : 20.69
FOURIER : 30009 : 34.13 : 19.17
ASSIGNMENT : 38.938 : 148.16 : 38.43
IDEA : 8292 : 126.82 : 37.65
HUFFMAN : 2983.2 : 82.72 : 26.42
NEURAL NET : 61.4 : 98.63 : 41.49
LU DECOMPOSITION : 1939.9 : 100.50 : 72.57
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX : 92.652
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 69.676
Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU : Dual GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz 3010MHz
L2 Cache : 6144 KB
OS : Linux 2.6.32.7-custom64
C compiler : gcc version 4.4.3 (GCC)
libc : libc-2.11.1.so
MEMORY INDEX : 24.774
INTEGER INDEX : 21.953
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 38.645
Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38

As you can see, the S/390 emulation is the one that suffers most. The new s390x 64-bits version performs a bit faster, but the processor on the host machine tops at 100% during more complex tasks.

I won’t put all the different (i486 / x86_64 / arm / s390 / s390x) packages on my site, but I’ll submit the SlackBuild script to SlackBuilds.org, so that you can build them yourself on your machines.

The result was quite usable, at least for the older mainframe operating systems like MVS.

Here are some screenshots:

Starting Hercules on ArmedSlack:

The 3270 terminal connecting to the “Mainframe”:

Hercules working hard doing an IPL:

Performing a clean shutdown of MVS:

More on this project later…

So what better to do than finally test the 64-bits version of Slack/390?

I wrote an 11-part post about installing Slack/390 on Hercules more than a year ago, and it is still valid and can be used for installing the newer version of Slack/390 as well – at least for about 90%.
I did encounter some problems though, but the 64-bits version of Slack/390 is still in the testing phase, so we should give it some credit.

What went wrong:

• The “ramdisk_size” from the supplied parmfile.txt is way too small, I made it 64000 to work
• Some packages were missing (sgml-tools / bin86 / clisp / gcc-gnat), but no show-stoppers
• The “etc” package was not installed, causing some problems with standard users and groups
• The symlink “sh” pointing to “bash” was missing, so none of the rc.* scripts would work (created it manually)
• The “/etc/slackware-version” file was missing

I managed to solve all problems one by one and installed SlackPkg from /extra afterwards to update my installation with the latest packages.
I sent my findings to the maintainers of Slack/390 to that future users won’t have the same challenges that I had

I might write a new series of posts on installing Slack/390, with updated information, but I’ll probably wait until the new version is a bit more stable.

For now, I’m having fun with my new 2x 64-bits emulated Mainframe running Slackware!

The updated SlackBuild is in the pending queue, but for those who cannot wait, pre-built packages for Slackware can be downloaded from my site.