I've started to have a look at the patches. Unfortunately, they're
still not really as logically separated as they should be. Which I
guess means I wasn't sufficiently disciplined putting them into CVS in
the first place.
I've started working on my own series of logical patches, starting
with, as you say the "content free" ones first. Initial set with
series file at
http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson/orinoco-patches
Nothing there so far that should cause any functional change.