Cannot read Touch, please restore it

My old computer died after eight years of faithful service, so I got a used G5 and put the old HD into a FW case. Some weeks later, I plugged my touch into the G5 only to have iTunes tell me it could not read the iPod, that I could click on Restore and all would be good. Luckily, since this was a G5, I was able to boot from the old OS, but then it coughed slightly on the sync and threw out a couple of (freeware) apps. At least I was able to tranfer over a movie I wanted, but this just pisses me off. "Restore" would revert me back to OS v2.x, so I do not consider that a reasonable option. I have been just a bit annoyed with Apple for several years, this BS raises that up more than a notch or two.