Disable screen refresh for RGB panels?

[the-automat]

I'm working with various Sunton boards (primarily 4827S043), and in general things are working great (aside: many thanks for all your hard work!). However, I'm having issues with trying to do OTA updates--the low level screen refresh seems to be interfering with the data receive loop on the ESP32 and causing timeouts (and just plain causing long upload times even if it doesn't timeout).
Is there an existing API call to disable the screen refresh routine? The ESP32 will reboot at the conclusion of the upload, so it doesn't necessarily need to be reversible.

[moononournation]

In ESP32 general, hold the GPIO 0 down while reset can enter the download mode.