ESP32-C3 Silence boot messages

[noisymime]

I'm using an ESP32-C3 chip but running into issues because of the boot messages that are automatically sent to the non-USB UART on boot up. I use this UART to communicate with another device and these messages are causing its communications to fail.

On traditional ESP32 boards these messages can be silenced by driving GPIO15 low at boot time, however there doesn't appear to be any option for this on the C3. The datasheet mentions that this can be done using GPIO8, however that is only possible by changing an eFuse (EFUSE_UART_PRINT_CONTROL).

Is there really no way to suppress these messages without having to change an eFuse value?

[ESP_Sprite]

There is not, that's what the eFuse is for.

[ksw_esp32]

I tried setting the UART_PRINT_CONTROL efuse to a value of 2 so the GPIO8 pin should inhibit the ouput to the UART when held low, but GPIO8 had no effect. However, setting it to 3 does disable output entirely on the UART. Any comments?