Have you looked at the NetBSD guide ?
I'm also kind of a newbie and I've found it very useful, indispensable 
really ;)

http://www.netbsd.org/guide/en/

> Hi,
>
> I'm totally new to this *NIX thing! I have an old Tyan Motherboard with
> dual 200MHz Pentium Pro CPU's. I thought this would be a wonderful
> learning tool. So I tried loading a copy of Red Hat 8 that I was
> donated, but I found this unsatisfying, because it was all too easy to
> get going :-) So I downloaded netBSD 2.0 and burnt an ISO disk. I got
> my system to install, I've managed to add a user account and got
> X-windows working!! I think this is good coming from a Macintosh user
>
> :-)
>
> But how do I know if I'm using both CPU? Did I have to do something
> special during the install?
>
> When I boot the system a lot of writing flashes by :-P Looks
> informative. How do I slow it down?
>
> I guess I have to tackle installing packages next. Do I need to do
> anything different to work with dual CPU?
>
> I went to my local bookshop - found a book on everything except netBSD
>
> :-(
>
> John