ESP12F: No longer able to run Arduino Sketches - How is flash organized?

Of course, that was one of the first actions I performed, but I couldn't write 5+ days testing log! I can just add that all the 4 chips behave in the same way.

flash vendor:
E0h : N/A
flash devID:
4016h
QUAD;32Mbit
crystal:
26 Mhz

In addition, some info from esptool:

read_flash_status:
Status value: 0x0000

read_mac
MAC: 18:fe:34:9e:f3:0a

chip_id
Chip ID: 0x009ef30a

flash_id
Manufacturer: e0
Device: 4016
Detected flash size: 4MB

By the way, my questions were a little bit more complex, basically: is an Arduino-IDE created .bin enough to run on an "empty" ESP? If this is not the case, what are the Espressif modules that have to be loaded in order to have an ESP running? And, finally, what is the rule of the 4 Espressif supplied binaries?

I think all the above is quite obscure to most of the ESP users!