For the i386, NetBSD 1.1 brings greatly improved performance,
stability, and device support. Emulation for several UN*X and UN*X
like operating systems, including Linux and FreeBSD, has been added.
Many new PCI devices are supported, such as cards based on the AMD
PCnet-PCI Ethernet chip, the Digital DC21x4x family of Ethernet chips,
and the Adaptec AIC7870 SCSI host adapter chip.  Some drivers such as
"ccd" which previously only worked on other ports of NetBSD now work
on the i386 port.  Though still not known to be entirely stable, the
"ncr" driver for 53c8xx-series SCSI adapters has had substantial bugs
and performance issues resolved.

NetBSD 1.1 on i386 is also fully backward compatible with old NetBSD
i386 binaries, so you don't need to recompile all your local programs.