regarding the clock issue:

me, i set the date from the command line within netbsd, and then =
installed ntpd to keep it fine-tuned.  ntpd itself refuses to do the =
whole job; says it wont correct the time by more than 1,000 seconds. =20

seems to be holding fine so far.

ntpdate might work fine too, either as a repeated command or as a =
periodic cron job.

but about the core issue here- i have no idea either, why netbsd gets a =
whole different reading of the hardware clock, from what macos sees. =20

i just know vremya does its job mac-side, while ntpd does its job =
bsd-side on my LCIII 20/850. =20

[that's bsd 1.5.2, which incidentally crashes weekly-or-less in various =
ways.  here's hoping 1.6 will run and run stable; just wish i had hack =
skills to help you guys make it so.]

cheers
jn