as: ../../i386/locore.s:310: no such 386 instruction: `cpuid'

You need to rebuild gas.  This has been mentioned on current-users
several times.

   I went into ../../i386/ and found that there is a locore.s.old, I
   saved off locore.s, copied locore.s.old to locore.s and tried
   continuing the build, [..]

That's in general a very unsafe thing to do.  You should *never* try
mixing the source unless you really understand what it's doing.