damn, cross compiling c++ to msdos is kinda cool
and PCX import works -ish
pcx import seems to work, now palette
photographing the prototype on a 4:3 CRT, my cam (with a f5.6 tele) picks up the scan as the phosphor color spectrum changes between sweeps on the monochrome monitor (Edit: I will also have to have some margin on the UI or it'll get clipped)

it's also surprising how some small quirks affect the speed, c++ compiler vs. lib assembly:

row-by-row memcpy is more than 2x faster than a naive loop (above FPS is for an emulated 486, frame gets drawn entirely, with bg, fonts etc. each time)