Does anyone know of a way to directly read and write to and from the EEPROM of the ESP8266? By this I mean upload or download a hex (or somthing similar) to the EEPROM storage from a PC without touching the flash. I'm thinking something like an equivalent to
-U eeprom:w:somedata.hex
as used in avrdude.
I can't see anything in the ESP8266 DownloadTool that looks like it will do this, and I can't find anything on Google as it just brings up articles about manipulating EEPROM from within your software.
I am aware that I could have 2 pieces of software, one initial program that populates the EEPROM, then the actual software I want to run, but that's not quite the solution I'm looking for.
As for the rationale behind my request, I would like to bulk program a load of ESPs with software (or even get a supplier to do it) that looks for data (e.g. serial number) in the EEPROM. Then at a later time just upload a small file to the EEPROM with said data in, without having to reprogram the ESP entirely.
Any thoughts?