But in my 'toybox' i had another problem module discovered some time back. I pulled this and compared the 2 with attempts to flash WLED and TASMOTA and a few arduino example sketches.
Both 'dodgy' devices exhibit the same behavior in that any AP hosted is only visible to one possible client computer ( a 10yr old i5 laptop) and that any attempts to provide valid credentials to an AP that requires authentication fails. and while 1st pages served from unprotected accesspoints can be received such as the tasmota wifi credential save page, attempts to save data /pass back credentials falls over or times out.
when the arduino example sketch to query and list local ssids was flashed it worked as expected.
when the arduino example sketch to host a password protected AP was flashed valid authentication just failed.
Flashing was accomplished using the esptool.py and i used the erase all option between flashing different firmwares.
2 modules both exhibiting the same behavior?? I think i should be looking for a common h/w component failure ?? if so how should i proceed? IF not WTF?
any help and direction is appreciated
Thanks in advance