Being the one person referred to above, I got out my unbootable iPod to attempt the fixes described in the referenced article. I had taken this iPod to Tekserve a few months ago where it was pronounced dead. Fortunately I couldn’t bring myself to throw the corpse out. Apparently another cure for dead iPods is a simply a long sleep or an iComa. When I plugged it in prior to working on it, it came to life all on its own – a miracle.