Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

d2r: how to reboot an iPod photo. Well, the things aren’t perfect, I got the “Black Screen of Death” on my iPod Photo yesterday. Had it and it was working fine, put into my pocket and then got ready to play in the car and it sat there completely blank. No Apple logo, no nothing. Trying the reboot sequence below didn’t help. It was like it wasn’t awake.
“Ed”:http://www.melodeo.com/executive.html told me, “Heck Rich, this has happened to me, you just need to put your iPod away and let it rest.” What he meant is that sometimes the firmware gets so confused you have to wait for the battery to completely drain, then the power on software takes over. The issue is that there is no “hard” power off with an iPod. That is, there is no way to really shut it off, so if the firmware gets confused, you have to wait for the battery to completely drain.
Ironically, recharging the thing actually is a problem since the hung firmware stays around, you need a hard power down to restart everything.
He was right. Waited day for it to drain and then plugged it in, got to the Apple logo and all is fine.
If your’s isn’t so hard hung that you can see the Apple, logo or some strange screen, then here’s how to do soft reset on an iPod Photo put the Hold switch in ON, then back to OFF. Then press MENU and SELECT simultaneously and hold for a bit, and on release the iPod should reboot.
Also, according to the missing manual it is
possible that the iPod is misbehaving due to battery charge confusion (not sure how that would happen, but anyway…) and for that you can plug it to the charger so that you can rule out that problem.