[MarkMoxon]

All NOPs should be explained in the commentary, apart from the ones in the fast loader routine in the elite-gma1.asm file. Are these the ones you mean?

If so, I haven't documented the fast loader as it's not really a feature of Elite, but I think the NOPs there are for timing when talking to the CIA1. The fast loader is documented in the Elite Harmless project, here, which might help:

https://github.com/Kroc/elite-harmless/blob/kroc/src/boot/gm...

The long string of NOPs in the elite-firebird.asm source are padding to ensure the vector overrides align with the correct addresses, as described in the commentary.

Most other NOPs are commenting out the checksums if that feature is disabled by the build; again, they should be explained in situ.

If you're wondering about any others, I'd be happy to explain!