install questions

[Christopher Vance]

I have been a happy user of FreeBSD/i386 since 2.2.6.  I have always
tracked stable, and often had current on another partition.

I have i386 install CDs for 5.2, and have successfully used them to
install /i386 on my amd64.

I am considering upgrading to /amd64 on the same machine.  Can
I use the sysinstall I already have to do a network install of /amd64
stuff from a server somewhere, or do I need a 64-bit sysinstall to do
this from?  I'm happy to newfs the partition if that's appropriate -
it has nothing valuable on it.

I've seen suggestions that I can run /i386 stuff on /amd64 provided
the kernel emulation is included and the 32-bit libraries are present.
Are these 32-bit libraries identical to the i386 ones, or have they
been tweaked to know they are emulating on /amd64?

The SATA controller is a VIA, not the SiI 3512A &^%$ which made me
abandon FreeBSD on a different machine.

Any other things I need to know?  (I've made a brief foray into Gentoo
on this machine, and I'd rather do FreeBSD, where things are the way
I'm used to.)

-- 
Christopher Vance