What's the oldest file on your computer?

[xraydoc]

This was a Slashdot poll a few weeks ago, but I thought it would be fun here...

What's the oldest document file on your computer's hard drive? Not floating on a backup disk somewhere, but actually residing on your computer's hard drive?

The oldest I have are a couple of documents from September, 1994. They're not particularly useful to me these days, but they're still on my drive. Both are AppleWorks word processor documents, which I can't actually open any longer (though I can extract the plain text). Some time in 1998, though I don't remember doing so, I converted the text to RTF files. Still have those files on my hard drive, too.

I almost certainly have some older files on floppy and Zip Disk somewhere, though I don't have a Mac that has a floppy drive any more. And I know buried at my parents house somewhere are some (likely degraded and unreadable) 5.25" Apple II floppies. They've been sitting there for about the last 25 years.

What's the oldest file you still have on your computer??

 

[jav6454]

Text file from 1995. Ironically, it is very useful.

 

[R94N]

I recently cleaned out everything I don't use, so there's not really anything on my computer (yet). Also, I'm not old enough to have files from like '98 on them - I was only born in 1996

 

[rdowns]

December 1999 is the oldest.

My Mac SE has files on it from 1989.

 

[ValSalva]

July 1998 are my oldest. Pics of Damon Hill's Benson & Hedges Jordan.

 

[Schtumple]

How could you even search for something by it's date? I don't know what the oldest file I have on here is, but I'd love to know.

 

[0098386]

Oldest I could find was a patch application for a game that I can no longer find.

13/04/1997

 

[colocolo]

You got me curious, so I checked.. the oldest file is a DBASE document, from July 24, 1986, last opened... July 24, 1986.
It is some info from a client though, it couldn't possibly be mine as I was 9 at the time.

From what I remember using, Asterax Data, from August 1994. Great game, though I have no way to run it anymore.

Talk about keeping junk around


I thought I had some stuff I made from the early 90's, but there are nowhere to be found inside my hard drive.

 

[iGav]

I've got fonts dating back to the 1980's, obviously I didn't create those or anything, still old though.

Just checked 11th September 1989 apparently.

 

[mscriv]

I've got you all beat. I have a scanned copy of my original birth certificate from 1975. Oh wait, you mean the age of the actual file... umm... carry on.

 

[highres]

A folder of term papers for college created using MacWrite v2.2 on a 512K Fat Mac and then transferred from Mac to Mac for the last 25 years!!! The created date on the oldest is August 9th, 1985.

to

What a LONG way we have come...

 

[Swallagoon]

The oldest file I have is a misc data file from 1979. It is in an old game folder I have on my pc.

 

[velocityg4]

The oldest file I have is from 1995 from my freshmen year of high school health class. I don't know the exact date as my oldest date stamp is from 6/3/2005 which must be when I had replaced my water damaged G4 with an AMD gaming rig I built.

Though I have some Mac and DOS games from the 80's and arcade rom's from a couple early 70's arcade games in MAME.

As for oldest document on hard drive that is hardly fair criteria for Apple II owners as those did not come with hard drives. You can still type just as well on a IIe Platinum as on a Mac Pro. The funny thing is those old Apples had instant on screen feedback when typing quickly while even the fastest computers today can sometimes lag when typing.

 

[R94N]

July 1998 are my oldest. Pics of Damon Hill's Benson & Hedges Jordan.

I can just about remember those Jordans The yellow ones? They can't advertise cigarettes anymore!

 

[adk]

For me, it's the "Bum Bum Song" by Tom Green, illegally download via Napster in 1999.

 

[talmy]

I've got a program I wrote in 1980, in BASIC for a TRS-80, that I still use today, ported to MS-DOS and running in a Virtual Machine. But that probably doesn't count since it was ported to MS-DOS about 1984 or 1985.

I found a spreadsheet file from 1983. I don't know if I have anything that would open it now! It's probably Visicalc. I'm surprised it popped up. Typically I would have deleted it years ago.

I've got a computer game source file from 1976, but I didn't write it. Written in Fortran, it does compile and run on my Mac!

Proprietary formats render most old data files worthless. And most of my old programs are for machines long gone and with little reason to even find an emulator (because advancing technology makes old programs undesirable anyway) I've tossed them. Even source code has limited use.

 

[renewed]

A userguide from DEc 7, 2007

 

[cluthz]

Haha, it's apparently King's Quest 1. I copied it over to my i5 two months ago to run it in basilisk. I replayed it recently

 

[chrmjenkins]

I have the old testament. I'm told that's pretty old.

 

[Eidorian]

I need to find my floppies.

 

[yojitani]

A word doc from May 1996.

 

[jav6454]

I have the old testament. I'm told that's pretty old.

The Sumerian Tablets would like to have a word with you.

 

[chrmjenkins]

The Sumerian Tablets would like to have a word with you.

Sadly, they can't. Language barrier.

 

[jav6454]

Sadly, they can't. Language barrier.

Don't worry, the Rosetta Stone is there to help.

 

[Xavier]

Oldest files are from '00.