Already jailbroken 3gs(months ago) stuck in recovery mode with error 28

[thyssen]

I got my 3gs months ago b4 the new 3gs's with the new bootrom came out and jailbroke (3.1.2)with blackra1n with no probs. have had no probs for months, then yesterday i'm listening to music and the phone jumps into recovery mode & gets stuck there. I try to restore and it keeps coming back to restore error 28. tried it in recovery and dfu mode and same thing. i tried "irecovery" to get out the loop that someone mentioned in an earlier post but it doesn't work at all. So i tried reading on error 28 and some say it might be a hardware issue, some don't, some have heard it is caused by water damage, and others have gotten out of the loop using a bunch of different methods like different pc, popping the sim card in/out, etc.. and none of these have worked for me. i called apple care cuz i bought it legit and paid for it and they told me to try the same things and nothing. i have an appt at apple store in 8 hours and they will probably end up replacing it with a new one that will prolly have that damn new bootrom and i don't want that. Any suggestions on how to get it out of recovery loop? maybe downgrading somehow? please help .. thanks