Old Iphone, no SIM, tried to upgrade now bricked

Question

I searched here for this exact issue but found nothing that matched, if it has been asked and answered, my apologies.
Got my 3G up and running. Old phone had SIM removed for new. I tried to upgrade the old Iphone to 2.0 and it is now bricked. 911 service etc only.
Backed up all info, phone rebooted and now nothing.
Anyone know how to get this working? Any help is greatly appreciated, I am sure this is a super busy place right now!

Answer 1

I upgraded my original iPhone to 2.0 before I purchased an iPhone 3G. When I purchased the iPhone 3G I was told at the Apple store that I could use the original iPhone as an iPod Touch but that I should remove the old SIM. Wisely, however, I decided not to throw it away. When 2.0.1 came along, I attempted to upgrade without a SIM in my old phone and I was bricked. However, I put the old SIM back in the phone and everything worked again. The phone said is would take a while to activate and I was a bit worried that this would deactivate my new 3G phone. So I unplugged from iTunes and everything was fine with both phones. This time, however, I left the SIM in the old phone. When 2.0.2 came along I allowed iTunes to upgrade but it appeared to brick my phone even with the old SIM in place. However, just to give it a try, I unplugged the phone and plugged it back into iTunes and, as before, all functionality returned. I now happily use the original iPhone at home in airplane mode with wifi on; and the 3G phone when I leave the house. This works perfectly since I don't have a usable AT&T signal at home. I'm probably foolish but I somehow think that I am saving the battery on the new phone by using the old phone at home.
p.s. I think that the reason that the old SIM card works (rather than a new one) is because it is assigned to an active phone number even though the SIM card itself is supposedly inactive. At least I was told it was inactive as soon as the new phone was activated. However, I have not tried to make calls with the old phone (or its SIM) since activating the SIM in the new phone. I do find it a bit frustrating that, even though Apple and AT&T said that one could use the old phone as an iPod Touch, there appears to be a lot of confusion regarding the ground rules for doing this. I do have Apple Care for the original iPhone (until June 29, 2009). So if it truly got bricked at some point, I would take it into the Genius Bar.