I'll try isolating the breakage with a slightly different strategy:
https://android-build.linaro.org/builds/~berolinux/panda-bisect-component/
The idea is to isolate the component that breaks things by switching revisions from the pinned-manifest.xml files. Once we know the component, finding the commit should be a lot easier. The first build is identical to the first bad build, with
device/linaro/common device/linaro/pandaboard platform/dalvik platform/frameworks/base platform/system/core
reverted to the revisions found in the last good build. I'm pretty sure that will produce another "good" build (the other changes really shouldn't affect bootup...)
Then we can go back to the versions of device/* from the bad build, and we're already down to 2 or 3 components as the possible culprits.
If we ever have plenty of time, a "repo bisect" function (like git bisect) would be great to have...
ttyl bero