I had a go at compileing the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run driver and it looks like it would work if I had the correct hardware - at least the nvidia kernel module compiles OK...
-> Kernel module compilation complete.
ERROR: Unable to load the kernel module 'nvidia.ko'. This happens most
frequently when this kernel module was built against the wrong or
improperly configured kernel sources, with a version of gcc that differs
from the one used to build the target kernel, or if a driver such as
rivafb/nvidiafb is present and prevents the NVIDIA kernel module from
obtaining ownership of the NVIDIA graphics device(s), or NVIDIA GPU
installed in this system is not supported by this NVIDIA Linux graphics
driver release.
Please see the log entries 'Kernel module load error' and 'Kernel
messages' at the end of the file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for
more information.
-> Kernel module load error: insmod: error inserting './usr/src/nv/nvidia.ko':
-1 Unknown symbol in module
-> Kernel messages:
...
nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_bind_memory
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_enable
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_backend_acquire
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_bridges
nvidia: Unknown symbol i2c_del_adapter
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_free_memory
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_allocate_memory
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_unbind_memory
nvidia: Unknown symbol i2c_add_adapter
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_copy_info
nvidia: Unknown symbol agp_backend_release
Linux agpgart interface v0.103
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: Intel 945GM Chipset
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected 7932K stolen memory
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xd0000000
intel_rng: FWH not detected
drm: Unknown symbol i2c_transfer
intel_rng: FWH not detected
i801_smbus 0000:00:1f.3: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
NVRM: No NVIDIA graphics adapter found!
..but it appears that the agpgart, drm and i2c errors above have been acted on as the relevant modules are loaded: $ lsmod
Module Size Used by
nvidia_agp 2944 0
drm 84616 0
i2c_i801 5280 0
i2c_core 9980 2 drm,i2c_i801
intel_agp 14984 1
agpgart 15724 2 drm,intel_agp
..i.e. this might work on a machine with the correct hardware.
To get this far, I used the full kernel source and the default tinycore .config - there is an error message stating that the kernel source cannot be found, but if you answer "OK" to try to download an nvidia kernel source, the local kernel source is used anyway...