Got this SPI OLED to work with the ESP8266-12E while the Wifi connected to a router. I found the issue and will post it here in case anyone else runs into this. By default, the 8266 uses GPIO 2 for UART1 on the ESP8266, and this UART1 can only be used to send data – many use this as a debug port is they are also using UART0 for other things (like talking to another component, which I was doing). The problem is that GPIO2 must be used for D/C functionality for the SPI OLED and apparently cannot be remapped (as I was trying to do for debug purposes) succesfully. Bottom line: hook up the SPI pins from the 8266 exactly as stated, do not try to use them for anything else.
