Thank you chofrock - I managed to connect my Galileo using the audio jack and seeing the boot process on my PC. The reason for the shield though is old RS-232 equipment is +/- 12 volts and could fry the board if connected without the shield.
I thought the shield was also a UART connection. I will test your idea though by writing a short sketch to open a serial connection and print "Hello World" and see if the old terminal gets it…. Will post an update in a few days.
thank you,
John