OK, mine is iPad 2 wifi/gsm. It was brought to me for screen repair (DIY gone bad). The power/volume ribbon was sliced, the wifi flex cable also. Replaced these and the new screen but before I apply adhesive I want to make sure the durn thing works. The first time I powered it up the connect to iTunes/USB picture came up so I did. The restore failed so I came here and followed the instructions to the letter over a dozen times now. First on a win7 pc, then winxp laptop, then iMac OSx latest version as of Oct 20 and now I just got my new MacBook Pro and have tried it three times. All attempts stall at the Restoring iPad Firmware process at about 2/3 completed on the status bar of the iPad. Once stalled for a period of 10 to 45 minutes the error code -1 pops up.
I have no idea what iOS it was running whenI got it, nor do I know if its ever been jailbroke. I have looked and looked but cannot find anything more definitive on this error other than 'the device may need service'. Does anyone know what this means? What kind of service? I've been working on this iPad for over a month and am at a complete loss now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Based on the story you have outlined above, I'd be pretty certain that there is a hardware fault, which could well be a corruption of the flash storage or baseband. Since you've tried on a number of PC's, Windows and Mac, and always get a -1 error (which is a serious failure with an unidentifiable reason), IMHO you are out of luck. Either there was more boken on the device than you were aware of (highly possible since cables etc. were sliced!), or you've unfortunately damaged it during the repair.