Musings
I'm beginning to suspect that flasher.exe is very imperfect......it allows the entry of the start location ex 0x40000..but it may have the imperfection of completely ignoring the address selected
and load everything at 0x00000 regardless...certainly the output suggests that this is happening when the 0x4000 bin is being used.
Since esp8266 is fairly new and the early coders are somewhat undisciplined as they try to throw things at the esp8266 and hope they stick mostly because that is the only option given the lack of documentation and that the little documentation available is either out of date or just plain wrong. Eventually correct documentation and provable working code is the only thing that will survive as the wiki process lets robust information trump sketchy and doubtful information. For now everything should be suspected of being imperfect.
I'll try and install python so I can run your python flasher script... though it would be nice to have things evolve into a single flasher for all bins to remove dependencies between flashing and bins.
It is a bit optimistic but evolving to a single set of AT+ commands for the esp8266..variations in dialects that accomplish the exact same thing can be burdensome.
Lazarus has many developers, however there is a testing and consensus process that dictates what's in an official release.
Smoothieware's 3D printing code is perfected by just one or two ( often just one developer) dictating the release after input from select testers.
Maybe this board could be the gate keeper ( via links) to robust firmware software and documentation...Expressif is attempting to bring stability to some of this but so far it has been imperfect
Android apps get star ratings perhaps documentation ,firmware SDK software could be rated by a growing group of members to this board.