I'm playing with the 4x10 mode now. Much less RAM used.
But still haven't got my rows and columns figured out yet.
At work we made an excel sheet with color coded columns and formulas to give the hex numbers when blocks are filled in. On Monday I'll post it here for others who want to do similar things.

If you do 32 shiftout lines it makes the hex file over 10kb in size. Yesterday I had success in writing the contents to the eeprom and then reading the whole thing in a 256 count for loop. That hex file was something like 1.5kb.

A 16F876A is not a requirement. I chose it for the two pwm channels and this display idea came up later. Skimask's post about using the nokia lcd gave me insight on how to write to the eeprom. He used the 18F series for its bigger eeprom and faster speed. I found the PIC18F4620 which matches his specs and also has multiple pwm channels. Do you think thats better suited?