iPod touch iPod Touch 4g stuck on Apple logo

Hello everybody, new to macrumors but not new to the iPod Touch scene.

I have a little story to tell you first to explain my problem.

My friend Marcus found an iPod Touch 4th generation 32gb on our school's tennis' courts. I've jailbreaked his iPod before so he knew I could do something with this one.

The iPod is seriously messed up. The screen has several cracks in it and the top faceplate and part of the bottom right faceplate is peeled away so you can see the parts (chips). When I pressed the top button (power, whatever you wish to call it) once, nothing happened (I have reason to believe that it is broken). I pressed the home button once and then it was on with this weird screen (it was a slide android unlock deal). I figured that is was jailbroken and figured they probably had sbsetting so I tried to activate it. Once done I touched the reboot option (bad idea).

I am now stuck on the apple logo because whoever jailbroke it must have had it tethered. Any ideas on how to get out of this mess? Tried methods like DFU and recovery mode but so far no response.

Every, I'd say, 5 minutes the logo disappears, a white screen shows, that disappears, a black screen shows, that disappears and then the apple logo again

I did actually set it into recovery mode yesterday but I figured that everything would be fine and that I would do it later that night (WRONG!)

Any help would be greatly appreciated and it would seem that a lot of others have this issue as well.

Are you two sure? If it has parts revealing, it could possibly corrupt the software?

I'll think about it and keep trying though.

Well, I was able to put it into recovery mode and I had to estimate very accurately how long I would need to hold each button, since the apple logo was on the entire time.

May do something with it since most of the buttons are broke.

Thanks for the help everyone!