Apparently I left my second gen iPod Touch on, face down on coffee table, and untouched … for about six months. Today I wanted to check something on it, and when it didn’t power up, I connected it to my MacBook Pro.

Everything seemed to be fine, except I couldn’t set the date or time. Each time I had the time almost correct, the wheel would turn, leaving me with (once again) a date from 1969.

Couldn’t connect to the App Store, because of the system’s date. Google wasn’t much help, so after trying a few things that didn’t work, I came here and sure enough, I’m not the only person that had that problem!

Kudos to the author of that guide!

Good news! Got a SIM card. Bad news: It was too small to fit into the holder in the phone.

After a quick trip to my local T-Mobile store, I had an adapter — which, I just discovered, I probably could have made myself, according to this article:

Create a Micro-SIM to SIM Adapter

Alas, the SIM card I stuck in there was identified as not being one of the phone’s supported carriers … so we’ll see.

Okay, so I got on eBay and bought a SIM card “for testing purposes” for about three bucks. It may or may not work, but it should at least get me past the “Dude. You Need a SIM Card” error.

We’ll see how that goes.

A couple days ago, I bought myself a used iPhone 3G for $25. It didn’t have a SIM card, but I was able to connect it to my MacBook Pro, fire up iTunes, and basically load the same songs that are on my iPod on it. I was even able to download and install an app I had downloaded from the programmer’s website a few years ago I was sure hadn’t been updated.

All good so far … until I decided to add a password, and then decided that maybe updating the phone’s OS might be a good idea. The password was the same as that of my iPod … but after the update, suddenly I “typed in the wrong pass code.”

After fighting with that for a few hours, I did the restore bit … but now, since there is no SIM card (did I mention I have three phones? No need for another), I can’t get back to where I was before the stupid software update and now I have a phone I can’t use for the purpose for which I bought it.

Thanks, Apple.

That said, any ideas on how to get past that SIM card issue?