Difficulty troubleshooting WiFly Shield with Arduino NG

I recently purchased a WiFly shield (WRL-09954) but I am having difficulty running the troubleshooting sketch, viewtopic.php?f=32&t=25129

I am using an Arduino NG (ATmega8) and the WiFly shield (9954) with a 14.7456 MHz crystal.

These are the steps I followed

  1. soldered header extensions to the shield

  2. plugged shield into my Arduino NG

  3. in USB power mode, uploaded the SpiUartTerminal sketch

  4. switched Arduino to PWR mode

  5. plugged in USB cable, then plugged in AC adapter power cable

  6. opened serial monitor

On the serial monitor, the output is stuck at “Attempting to connect to SPI UART…” and there is nothing else. I have tried power cycling and restarting serial monitor several times but each time the result is the same.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

I did a search on this forum and it appears another member had the same problem, in their case the unit was defective and they had it replaced. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=23498&start=75

Is there an easy way to tell if the WiFly shield has been bricked?