If anyone is interested.. I've managed to compile all the various vmware patches out there and put them into one set of patches here that allow Workstation 7.1.6 modules to compile and run under kernel 3.12.6. The fixes were compiled against stock modules from the workstation 7.1.6 build-744570 installer.
The only issues I have is the init scrip for loading the modules under 2.6.39.4 no longer automatically loads them, I need to create /dev/vmnet* at each reboot and manually load vmnet-bridge to get the network going..