This is another example of apple's stupidity. This is off of memory, but if I remember correctly, your problems caused by apple introducing a charging technology for the 2g release, and then reverting back to the old way on all newer gens. If you try to use a charger/dock/stereo that uses the 2g tech, you'll get a compatibility error.
It's hardware, not software, so your SOL. Same thing happened to me.