As I want to drive the ESP from an Arduino using SoftSerial, I changed the baud rate to 9600, which seemed to work correctly. I still couldn't talk to it with the Arduino for some reason, and now after switching back to the CH340G (here comes the problem) I get only garbage from it. I'm using Arduino IDE 1.6.13 on Linux/Ubuntu with a board type of "Generic ESP8266 Module". On every reset, at a variety of baud rates (notably including 115200 which was the board's original setting, and 9600 which I believe I set it to), I get a burst of garbage on the serial monitor.
Am I going to have to resort to an oscilloscope to see what's happening?
(I hope not, as I don't have one. Side question: is the DSO138 digital 'scope any good?)