Robert,
I am sorry to have to say, don't get your hopes up. Text-Mode BIOS Setup is NOT an integral part of the standard BIOS that can just be "switched back on"; it is a feature, like so many others, and there is a cost to implementing and maintaining each and every feature. In this case, the costs were weighted and the decision was made to remove this feature. It is unlikely that this decision will be reversed. Weigh this against the effort to fix the other bugs that you've reported here...
Sorry,
...Scott