Dippy : That's similar to how PICAXE.Net is used to program a remote PICAXE at the .Net end. It's also similar to how I tried to get wireless downloading to work through XBee, although I tried to do that live, one byte at a time, rather than by buffering.
Rev-Ed could add an extra layer to the download protocol ( using two bytes sent instead of one with the first simply indicating if 'break' were present or not ) which would mean just needing a simple interface at the PICAXE Serial In end ( which could perhaps be an 08M ). That would simplify wireless and IR download, but I do not expect it's going to be on the cards any time soon as it's an esoteric problem which most people have no need to solve. Plus there are all the other 'problems' which it introduces.
My XBee attempt was to take the actual serial stream and create the extra prefix byte. It wasn't a total success but did show some promise.
For anyone not quite following the plot, I have thought of a real world analogy ( and it doesn't necessarily involve Marx ! ) ...
You go to a house and ring the door bell. You cannot hear the person shouting back because the door bell drowns them out, but you have to keep ringing the door bell until they respond, because you will disappear in a puff of smoke as soon as you stop doing so if you haven't heard a response.
What's needed is a means to just knock once on the door so the knocker can hear the subsequent response. But the home owner will not respond back until they hear the door bell ringing. What's needed is a door knock detector which makes the home owner think the doorbell is ringing when the knock occurs ( and some means of stopping the home owner thinking that if the knocker does unexpectedly disappear in a puff of smoke ).
Plus some means of converting what would have been a door bell push from the caller into a single door knock to start with. <code><pre><font size=2 face='Courier'> Mr Marx the Door bell A door Door knock to Mr Engles
door bell to door knocker fake door the responder
pusher knock converter bell ringer
.------.
.-------. .-------. | .-^-.
O | | -.- | | | (| O |)
-|- C|------| |-----> O >-----| |-----' -|-
/ \ | | | | / \
`-------' `-------'
/|\ |
`----------------------------------------------------------'
Response </font></pre></code> ( yes, it is fun in my 'own little world' ).