installed second MacPorts copy, now can't see installed ports

[Allen McBride]

I wanted to see if I could figure out what this "port mdmg" stuff is  
all about, so I tried to follow some advice Rainer gave me a month  
ago: I downloaded the MacPorts tarball, then did the following:

1) Temporarily removed /opt/local/bin and /opt/local/sbin from my path  
(I made this step up because, when I tried it without doing this  
first, I got an error during configuration about not having tcl  
threads).
2) ./configure --prefix=/opt/solfegetest
3) make
4) sudo make install
5) cd /opt/solfegetest/bin
6) sudo ./port -v selfupdate
7) restored my usual path
8) sudo port -v selfupdate (expected this to sync my main macports  
installation)

Everything seemed to go fine, but now when I run "port installed", I  
get "No ports are installed."

"which port" returns "/opt/local/bin/port", as expected.  I've never  
thought about the registry before, but it seemed like an obvious thing  
to think about now, and I see there are no files in /opt/local/var/ 
macports/registry.

Where did I go wrong?  Can I undo this damage?

Thanks,
Allen

(10.5.6, Intel, MacPorts 1.71)