I did a little digging though some S10 forums, and people seem to be saying that it's a "bolt-on" conversion to swap from a Gen2 power steering to a Gen1 manual steering box.
Manual steering saves the space and weight of the power steering pump, and the power from the engine required to run the pump.
Most guys who have done the power-to-manual steering swap seem to be doing it for "performance". The weight savings and reduced parasitic drag on the engine give the vehicle a little more power.
In my case, I'm more interested just saving that energy and going for efficiency.
Here's a YouTube video of a guy showing a steering swap on a Blazer - which is just the SUV version of the S10/Sonoma pickup truck.
Here's a still image from that video that shows the power steering vs. the manual steering box.
After watching this YouTube video, it really doesn't look too hard to convert the steering. I've never worked on steering before, but I think I can handle this.
I'll just need the typical PB-Blaster, quadruple the time somebody else would take, and my typical batch of curse-words!
The great thing about anything I ever do is that if I can do it, it proves that ANYONE can!