I build brmh-win32-sdl in a cygwin shell running GNU's make and
Microsoft's cl.exe compiler/linker/tools.

To build with the same setup:
1. Install cygwin from cygwin.org/setup.exe. You'll want to install the "make"
package at a minimum. Installing "unzip" and "wget" might save you some time too.
2. Install Microsoft's free compiler. I think they call it "Visual C++ Express"
<http://www.microsoft.com/express/vc/>.
3. Tell VC to configure the environment for command line compiling. Or, 
email me for help on doing this manually. I managed this without registering.
4. You should be able to run "cmd.exe" and from that "cl.exe" then get some output.
5. Now, from cygwin's bash shell, try "$ make -f Makefile.cl".
6. You should get an error about how SDL/SDL.h is missing.
7. Unpack libSDL's VisualC library (<http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-devel-1.2.14-VC8.zip>)
8. Move the SDL headers or tweak brmh's Makefile.cl so that SDL/SDL.h is available.
9. Tweak things so SDL/SDLmain.lib and SDL/SDL.lib are available.
10. Try "$ make -f Makefile.cl" again. This should make a netrek.exe.
11. Copy SDL.dll into netrek.exe's directory.