Won't connect with AT*SSID, but will with AT*NS

[Bungo Pony]

You stated you have a WiModem232, not a WiModem.  What you show is a C64 screen with the WiModem's display.  Whatever you are using for a terminal program, it is in a PETSCII mode instead of an ASCII mode.  How can I tell?... the character case is reversed (upper and lower case characters are backwards).  An ASCII mode is *required* while entering the router's name and password... no exceptions.

I'm using an RS232C cartridge on the back of my C64 which I'm plugging the WiModem232 into. Yes, I know it's in PETSCII mode because I haven't written the routines to convert it to ASCII mode yet, and I'm not going to waste the time and brain power to write them until I can get the WiModem to actually behave for me. It was connecting perfectly fine early this morning before work, and now this evening when I have time to work with it, it's flat out refusing to connect with either command, both with the C64 and a PC running Telix. I don't know if it's just my WiModem or what, but it's been nothing but temperamental. And it's not just misbehaving with my router in the house, it's the one in my shop as well.

[Bungo Pony]

You stated you have a WiModem232, not a WiModem.  What you show is a C64 screen with the WiModem's display.  Whatever you are using for a terminal program, it is in a PETSCII mode instead of an ASCII mode.  How can I tell?... the character case is reversed (upper and lower case characters are backwards).  An ASCII mode is *required* while entering the router's name and password... no exceptions.

Update... I got it working. The C64 has two sets of alpha-numeric characters, and the shifted characters use a set that looks fine to the C64, but looks like a completely different character set to the WiModem. When it echoes back, it looks fine on the C64. I offset the shifted characters to the proper character set which PCs understand, and I was able to catch the WiModem in a happy moment where it was willing to connect.

The flakiness of the WiModem has made this an absolute time-consuming nightmare to debug, especially when it won't connect using either the C64 nor the PC on the same bench. The only thing that clued me in is that it absolutely never connected with the SSID command from the C64. Narrowing that down sooner would have saved me a lot of headache and time.

Anyway, here's a picture of it working. As you can see, the case is still inverted. But now that I actually have Crapterm communicating properly with the WiModem, I can write routines to fix the inverted case and resume working on the software I was writing to interface with it.

image

[admin]

As I stated (several times), you ABSOLUTELY MUST be using ASCII mode when entering the WiFi router name and password.  There is nothing "flakey" about the WiModem.  This is a REQUIREMENT of the ALL routers!   This is a universal requirement for all routers, which is why neither of the routers you tried worked. This has nothing to do with the WiModem, and why it's the very first thing stated in the user manual.  You also noticed the same issue with another WiFi modem product, which makes perfect sense because you are not doing what is required for the router to make a connection.

So, again... you can NOT send PETSCII characters to the router during setup and expect that to work.  Only the ASCII character set is supported by routers during setup. Once the router is setup then the format doesn't matter... the router only cares  what format is sent to it during setup. You verified this yourself by changing the characters sent to the router, converting them to ASCII.