ipod may have shorted out, need another opinion?

I have yet to figure out who broke one of the front USB ports on my computer because no one will fess up to it, but without knowing, i plugged my 30GB 5th Gen iPod video into it. This immediately caused my computer to shut down (most likely do to a short), and also my iPod. Now when I turn my iPod on, it gives me a message saying "please wait very low battery".

Do you think that the short may have just damaged the battery? Because I can easily buy a new replacement one for $20 from Newegg, or do you think the entire iPod is toast?

When I managed to get it to come on while plugged into the wall charger, it still played music, videos, and showed photos. I then reformatted with itunes to see if it would fix it and now it won't even stay on long enough to sync everything back to it. Now while being plugged into a wall charger, it is in an endless loop of saying that message, then trying to start up and immediately dying. It does this about ever 10 seconds. Please tell me this can be fixed by simply buying a new battery.