2nd gen blinking orange and not showing up in iTunes

Hello all,

I have a 2nd gen iPod shuffle I haven't used in a while. Earlier today, however, I tried to charge it and put some new songs on it from my iTunes. After connecting it to my 2nd gen MacBook Air (running iTunes 11) the shuffle seemed to charge (it'll now play the music that was already on it) but I wasn't able to put any new songs on it because it didn't show up in iTunes. Now, the shuffle was continuously blinking orange while it was plugged in so I thought the reason why it wasn't showing up in iTunes was because it had at some time been enabled for disk use (the manual says if the light blinks orange while connected it can be because it's a) syncing with iTunes or b) enabled for disk use). However, if it was enabled for disk use I should have been able to see it appear on my desktop as an external disk - which I couldn't!

So, does anyone have any idea what might be wrong with it and what I might be able to do to fix it?

Thanks in advance!