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...