It will do 640x400 x256 colors. I am trying to locate the source code...
I see. Whilst I can theoretically emulate that through VESA, I think I'll save it for my next hardware revision

Many dos programs won't start due to some dos programs memory requirements. I'm going to see if I can't make the shell dump out of memory completely when a program starts, it would then restart like a dos batch file after the program ends.
Are you referring to the conventional memory limitations within DOS? If so you can also try loading the launcher itself into extended/expanded memory upon DOS boot-up. Please ignore if you've already tried this..
Cheers Valentin