How to make a used iPhone into an iPod Touch?

[bollweevil]

Once upon a time, person X had a first-generation iPhone with AT&T service. Then he went to the Apple store and bought a new iPhone 3GS, and had the AT&T service transferred to the 3GS. Then he erased the old first-generation iPhone by clicking "Restore" in iTunes. Then he gave the old first-generation iPhone to me. It still contains a SIM card, but the SIM card is not associated with an active service plan.

My question: This thing is currently a brick. All it will show is the "Slide for emergency" screen. How do I make it function like an iPod Touch?

I tried taking out the SIM card, but it was still a useless brick.

 

[vbman213]

PwnageTool w/ "Hack-tivation"

 

[bollweevil]

PwnageTool is not working - it creates the custom .IPSW file, but when I try to use it to restore in iTunes, iTunes waits for like 6 minutes and then says "Failed to restore iPhone" with error code 1604.

Allegedly 1604 has to do with the USB ports, BUT iTunes can restore to the default (non-PwnageTool) software just fine, so it seems like the USB is fine.

I am using the most recent version of iTunes, most recent Mac OS X, most recent PwnageTool. Why isn't this working?

 

[Eso]

It should say "connect to iTunes to activate". Connect it to iTunes and the phone should say "waiting for activation" and you can use everything but the phone. Obviously it never will activate, but that doesn't matter.