>Adobe acrobat appears to check for supported platforms (NetBSD 1.4.1 isn't
>on their list) before opening, so I can't trick it into opening in
>emulation.  Any alternatives or work arounds?

In addition to the other suggestions, you may want to try ghostscript.
It'll read PDFs which are encrypted iirc.

Just install ghostview or gv from the packages.

Jonathan