Last things first... there should be no reason why you couldn't use MPASM for any PIC... the only real salient difference is in your CONFIG defines.

Have you looked at upgrading your project to the 18F4525 which has 1K of EEPROM... pin compatible and a quantum leap from the now obsolete 16F877. It's also got 4K of SRAM... and 48K of Program Codespace... so who needs EEPROM anyway?