So I've make scripts to automate making patches. Not very fast, but that's OK for now.

I found and fixed the build problem in binutils. It turns out that there was a missing recipie for elf32-tms9900.lo in bfd/Makefile.in. Fixing this problem allows binutils to build without any problems.

For future reference:

patching:
$ cd {path_to_original_files}
$ patch -p1 < patchfile

binutils:
$ ./configure --target tms9900 --prefix /home/eric/dev/tios/toolchain/WORKSPACE/emw
$ make all
$ make install


GCC:
$ ./configure --prefix /home/eric/dev/tios/toolchain --target=tms9900 --enable-languages=c
$ make all-gcc
$ make install

Tomorrow, I'll confirm that the build tools work as advertised and release.