For networking on msdos I recommend mTCP. Although it's C++.
The biggest problem however will be compiling the code. The only viable compiler for msdos is openwatcom so the question is if the code uses any fancy extensions or gnuisms. Also the only version of openwatcom that didn't produce broken binaries is the Windows version (or at least was about two years ago).
I notice there's a framebuffer version, so building a nano-linux distro that boots instantly into that shouldn't be that hard.