Hi,
I downloaded steemsse - it took me a total of five minutes to install, pull a set of ROM's and boot diskette.
There is a very impressive amount of documentation in the doc folder, and going through the setup option gives a n00b a lot of information about the various hardware and software configuration available in the original platforms.
Thanks for all the suggestions and tips.
My main goal is to put together a system I can "Hello, World" upon.