Spent a couple hours searching and trying stuff yesterday and I have been unsuccessful in getting it to respond. All of the 'simple' things I've found so far haven't worked and I'm not motivated enough yet to try the more complex things. I'll keep trying to bring it up but as I've wanted to have a 2nd Arduino and with the 3-5 week delivery time it was better to order now and best case in 3 weeks time I'll have fixed mine and then have 2. Worst case is I can drop the new one directly in and get back to work. But if I were screw around with this for 2 weeks and it's still dead then order, I'd have to wait t hat much longer.
I've not found better prices than form China on ebay for some things. I'd love to order American, but with the price range of this Arduino ranging from $40-$100+ I'd be paying more for less. For $62 delivered I am getting the ATMega 1280, a 128x64GLCD, good sized solderless breadboard, big handful of jumper wires, and a number of other useful bits.
As for the code I'll try and tinker with it, but can't say I'll make much progress until I get the new board. I'm kind of surprised that they don't make an Arduino emulator to test code.