nvidia driver "disappeared"

[David Bruce <dbruce@tampabay.rr.com>]

I had been using nvidia's accelerated driver (version 6106) plus kernel 2.6.8 
without trouble with Sid until Nov 10 (I had done a dist-upgrade the previous 
evening).  Now, X says the nvidia driver does not exist.  I noticed that 
there was a newer version of the nvidia driver (6629) as well as kernel 
2.6.9, so I compiled a new kernel and new modules in the "Debian Way" using 
make-kpkg, installed both resulting .debs, updated Grub, but I still have the 
same problem.  If I do a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86, the nvidia driver 
does not appear as an option.  I confirmed that I really had installed the 
nvidia-kernel*2.6.9*deb with dpkg.  Has there been a recent change in XFree86 
that causes it to look in different places for drivers than previously?  I am 
using the version currently in Sid (4.3.0.dfsg.1-8).  If there has been a 
recent update to XFree86 causing this behavior, how can I most easily go back 
to the old version?  Alternatively, is there a symlink I could create to tell 
XFree86 where to find the nvidia driver?

Thanks for any help
David Bruce