iTunes bricked my iPod! (non-iOS) Keeps retrying to boot

Sync'd my old 80GB pre iOS iPod with iTunes 11.0.1. It took a long time sync'ing and then when I came back the iPod had a black screen with just the Apple logo, and the iPod had disappeared from iTunes. So I disconnected it.

It wouldn't boot beyond that point, just is stuck on the apple logo boot screen.

Symptom: Apple logo screen appears. Backlight turns on for a few seconds and I hear/feel the drive spin up. After a few seconds the drive stops and the screen goes black. Then the whole cycle repeats.

I can soft reset the iPod (toggle hold switch then push center and menu button together for 6-10 seconds) but it still doesn't boot after that (same symptom). I was able to get it into disk mode (after reset, immediately push and hold center and play/pause button) and then iTunes will see it and attempt to sync but that doesn't solve the problem.

So I connected the iPod in disk mode and did a restore (erases all content and restores factory settings). Did not expect this would purge the sync _settings_ for my iPod but I went through recreating them and started a sync. 3 hours later...it finished sync successfully. I had to acknowledge that it couldn't copy some stuff in a dialog. And then I watched it as it went from "do not disconnect" to the apple logo screen again and disappeared from iTunes. Exactly the same state.

Steps to reproduce:

Connect iPod. Sync. FML. 😉

Any ideas? I'm leaving it in disk mode until the battery expires so that it doesn't spin up the drive a million times (since it was plugged in all afternoon it's got almost a full charge) and anyway the white screen probably will use more power...?

More details: iTunes said my iPod software was up to date (8.3 or some such thing) when they were on speaking terms, and I'm using an elderly MacBook with OSX v 10.6.8 and Intel processors. iTunes was freshly updated yesterday, I think 11.0.1 is correct but I closed the app so I'm not 100% sure.

This is really lame. Seriously.