> 1) What's the significance of the numbers displayed on the console just
>    after booting starts -- the ones with the "spinning bar" to their
>    right?

The size of the various sections of the kernel... "text", "data", and
"bss" (and then the various bits of the symbol table).

The section names are largely obscure; "text" is the read-only
executable portion; "data" contains writeable data which must be
initialized from the file initialized but writeable data, and "bss"
contains data which need only be zeroed (and is not present in the
file).

see size(1) and a.out(5) for more details.

> 2) Does NetBSD/i386 code use features of the more recent Intel CPUs?

By default, the distribution is compiled to run on all cpus (from i386
on up).  Certain features of the newer cpus (for instance, the "PG_G"
bit in PTE's for "global" translations which need not be flushed on
context switch) are detected automatically and used if present.
You can rebuild to specialize the code for newer cpus.

>    I presume the answer is "yes", so I guess the binaries installed by
>    sysinst from the distribution's *.tgz files differ depending on which
>    processor is in the machine?

No, there's no difference in the installed binaries.

> 3) Leading on from 2), if NetBSD/i386 is installed on a disk in one PC can
>    that disk be used in any another PC?

In general, yes.  Mechanical, electrical, and firmware/BIOS issues
may, of course, present difficulties; also, various configuration
files (e.g., networking configuration, disk layout/fstab, minor device
numbering, etc.,) will require some attention when transplanting a
disk between systems.

> (assuming the swap space on the disk is appropriate for the amount
> of RAM in the second machine)

Unlike BSD4.3-based releases, there is no requirement in BSD4.4-based
systems that swap space be larger than physical memory; this is
unlikely to be a significant factor.

					- Bill