UPDATE: After the lack of responses here, and the utter lack of helpfulness after Binging/Googling, I took the dive and bought a new Ethernet Shield. Ran the same code, worked on the first run. QED: Previous board was in fact a dud.
UPDATE: After the lack of responses here, and the utter lack of helpfulness after Binging/Googling, I took the dive and bought a new Ethernet Shield. Ran the same code, worked on the first run. QED: Previous board was in fact a dud.