iPod (with Dock Connector) 15GB firewire mounting issues with iTunes 7.0.2

Before I sent my iPod in for battery replacement I backed up my music and restored it under iTunes 7.0.2. I then disconnected it, put it in the box and sent it off. When I got it back, I charged it fully with the firewire cable and the wall charger then tried to mount it to refill it with music. It would not mount with the firewire cable. It is charging but will not show up in the finder or iTunes. I noticed that it would not turn off by pressing and holding the play/pause button. I figured it would eventually sleep so I put it into my laptop bag to bring with me to work.

I got to work and borrowed my buddies' USB cable and the iPod is completely dead. Dead like not even a boot screen. Apparently it can no longer sleep and completely discharged during the night. 😟 Additionally, the USB cable doesn't seem to be powering or charging it. I plugged it into my workstation using the firewire cable and although it will charge it still will not mount.

After about a half an hour of charging I disconnected the firewire cable and plugged in the USB cable. The iPod mounted into iTunes. I figured I would restore the iPod again to fix the firewire issue so I clicked Restore. I then got a message saying "You must connect using FireWire to restore the iPod." I cannot connect using Firewire. 😟

To recap, I cannot charge over USB, I cannot update over USB and I cannot mount over Firewire.

I reconnected using USB, Quit iTunes without dismounting the iPod then tried to erase the iPod with Disk Utility, which failed. Next the iPod wouldn't even mount under USB so I went into iPod diagnostic mode and found a new line item labeled USB DISK which forced the iPod to become visible to Disk Utility again. I repaired the iPod disk and it will once again mount under USB but will not charge and will not restore.

I have scoured the apple.com site to try and find a way to downgrade my iPod to what it was before 7.0.2 but cannot find anything.

iTunes 7.0.2 has rendered my iPod totally useless. It was bad enough having a battery that was toasted and was glad to finally get that taken care of but now that I have a battery that works I have software that cannot mount via firewire and will not turn my iPod off and drains the battery. Plus with no way to go back to a previous version Apple has rendered my iPod useless.

Help!... please.