To use a different context to everyone else so far: I inherited some of my grandpas tools, which included several files from a long time ago. I also have an old Black & Decker heat gun that was...
To use a different context to everyone else so far: I inherited some of my grandpas tools, which included several files from a long time ago.
I also have an old Black & Decker heat gun that was made in England. I doubt they make them there anymore.
My wife almost exclusively uses a sewing machine from 1879. I also inherited some of her grandfather's tools, including some clamps that almost certainly predate WW2.
My wife almost exclusively uses a sewing machine from 1879.
I also inherited some of her grandfather's tools, including some clamps that almost certainly predate WW2.
Same here! I have some files and hand-planing tools from my great grandfather. Not sure when they're from, some of them are probably more recent than I'd assume since he was a carpenter most of...
Same here! I have some files and hand-planing tools from my great grandfather. Not sure when they're from, some of them are probably more recent than I'd assume since he was a carpenter most of his life, but I have the cedar chest (actually just a storage chest) he made as a project when he was a boy. I believe it's dated 1912 or 1913 so he'd have been around 8 or 9. He became a carpenter and then a cabinetmaker.
Dang, I just have a few text funnies I downloaded in 1992... why do I still have it? I honestly didn't realize I still had them until I just looked now. They consumes a grand total of 1.1 mb....
Dang, I just have a few text funnies I downloaded in 1992... why do I still have it? I honestly didn't realize I still had them until I just looked now. They consumes a grand total of 1.1 mb. Which while significant back then is anything but now.
Great timing - I just discovered an old microSD card of mine taped to the side of an old external hard drive that I had in storage. The card was originally installed in my Motorola Razr from...
Great timing - I just discovered an old microSD card of mine taped to the side of an old external hard drive that I had in storage. The card was originally installed in my Motorola Razr from ~2006. I think the oldest picture that survived on there from several cleanups and phone swaps is from 2008. Tons of pictures from my junior and senior year of high school, so now I’m just figuring out a more permanent storage solution in my tiny home lab.
Ninja edit to be a buzzkill: my birth certificate ;)
The very oldest file I still have on my computer is also the first file I personally created (albeit with my dad's help!). It's a drawing I made on May 7th, 1988, when I was two years old. My...
The very oldest file I still have on my computer is also the first file I personally created (albeit with my dad's help!).
It's a drawing I made on May 7th, 1988, when I was two years old. My parents bought their first computer, a Mac Plus, that year and this is probably one of the first files any of us ever created on it.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what program it was made in and no idea how to open it.
I have 11 other drawings I made in 1988, plus two I made in 1994, and I have no idea how to view any of them (except as plaintext, which is gibberish). It's a bummer, but I keep hanging on to them just in case I ever figure out what file format they are.
I got curious and did some googling, there are a variety of utilities out there that seem to support ancient mac image conversions. There are a few formats. https://convertio.co/mac-converter/...
I got curious and did some googling, there are a variety of utilities out there that seem to support ancient mac image conversions. There are a few formats.
Ooo, thank you! After some mucking around, I ended up using deark to identify the files and get them converted to PNGs. So, here it is: the oldest file on my computer. I guess I'm not sure what I...
Ooo, thank you! After some mucking around, I ended up using deark to identify the files and get them converted to PNGs.
A few of the others I converted: 1,2,3 (I think my mom must have helped me with the hands on this last one, since it turns out she was shockingly good at drawing with a mouse in 1988.)
This is pretty awesome. I'm glad you were able to access them finally. Tbh, I'd consider printing and framing the first just as a conversational piece.
This is pretty awesome. I'm glad you were able to access them finally. Tbh, I'd consider printing and framing the first just as a conversational piece.
Every time I get a new computer, I make a point of installing my favorite childhood games, SimCity 2000 and Civilization II. I also transfer copies of some original save files from the time, since...
Every time I get a new computer, I make a point of installing my favorite childhood games, SimCity 2000 and Civilization II. I also transfer copies of some original save files from the time, since I think they're cool time-capsule artifacts. A few were re-saved after they were originally created, but the oldest I can find right now are some SimCity saves from June of 2000 (though the most interesting to me is the Civ 2 game I played the evening of 9/11 to try to take my mind off things).
My oldest file is an IRC log from 2001! I keep a bunch of them. Not sure why, any attempt at reading them always leads to massive amounts of cringe, especially since a decent chunk of them were my...
My oldest file is an IRC log from 2001! I keep a bunch of them. Not sure why, any attempt at reading them always leads to massive amounts of cringe, especially since a decent chunk of them were my first attempts at wooing a girl.
Still, deleting them would feel like deleting my childhood...
I think physical media is kind of cheating, but if that counts I have X-Wing on a stack of floppy disks somewhere. The oldest files I have that are currently in my filesystem are my copies of my...
I think physical media is kind of cheating, but if that counts I have X-Wing on a stack of floppy disks somewhere.
The oldest files I have that are currently in my filesystem are my copies of my homework assignments from highschool. Not sure why I kept them, but maybe one day I will read them for fun. They have been transferred across many disks/systems over the years through. The oldest file still in active use is probably my /var/log/pacman.log that has been there for the ~15 years my Arch system has been up.
I took a backup of my MS-DOS box when I finally shut it down decades ago. It contains some very old files from very old games and programs. The oldest file that I think is believable has a 'Date...
I took a backup of my MS-DOS box when I finally shut it down decades ago. It contains some very old files from very old games and programs. The oldest file that I think is believable has a 'Date Modified' of Thu 23 Apr 1987 6:19:42 AM MICPRINT.ESI It is from a very old command line based (if I remember correctly) family feud game.
Around 2-3yrs ago, I found the 3.5" diskette that contained my first website. Naturally, I bought an external USB diskette drive and transferred the files to my cloud storage for safe keeping....
Around 2-3yrs ago, I found the 3.5" diskette that contained my first website. Naturally, I bought an external USB diskette drive and transferred the files to my cloud storage for safe keeping. Anyway, the oldest file is from January 16, 1999. I was 11yrs old, almost 12yo. And it's a non-animated GIF of Mewtwo. Because my first website, all in handcrafted HTML, was about Pokemon. Here's what it looked like (at least in a modern browser), with that Mewtwo image.
I think I've got a few Amiga floppies with OctaMED, Fantavision and other early teens experiments on somewhere. They'd be early 90s but reading them would be anyone's guess. I'd have a heap of...
I think I've got a few Amiga floppies with OctaMED, Fantavision and other early teens experiments on somewhere. They'd be early 90s but reading them would be anyone's guess.
I'd have a heap of stuff from the late 90s and on and probably a copy of the anarchist cookbook that got passed around highschool. I don't know anyone that actually used anything in it and I should probably delete it.
I wrote a fair amount of fiction stories in the 90s to about 2005. The oldest files I have are from 1993. I admit I don't know why I keep them except for sentiment, and honestly I would probably...
I wrote a fair amount of fiction stories in the 90s to about 2005. The oldest files I have are from 1993. I admit I don't know why I keep them except for sentiment, and honestly I would probably be a bit embarrassed by some of it at this point -- if I bothered re-reading it, which I probably won't.
I personally? Have high school classwork from 2004 backed up. My parents have backups of files dating back to the mid '90s (though I made those backups years ago, and they haven't been checked...
I personally? Have high school classwork from 2004 backed up. My parents have backups of files dating back to the mid '90s (though I made those backups years ago, and they haven't been checked since, so their viability is an open question at the moment).
I keep this stuff around because backups of old files are negligible in terms of storage load, and it would be more effort to triage and clean them up than just to store them forever. Am I ever going to have a good reason to reread that essay about The Catcher in the Rye from 10th grade English? No, absolutely not (in fact, I'll definitely be happier if I don't), but I can't say that with confidence about everything in there, and there's too much of it for it to be worthwhile to sort through it all.
Toss up between: A “Half-Life Compendium” CD that was a pirated copy of Half-Life, Opposing Force and bundled a heap of mods like They Live and Action Half-Life, bought off a random street shop in...
Toss up between:
A “Half-Life Compendium” CD that was a pirated copy of Half-Life, Opposing Force and bundled a heap of mods like They Live and Action Half-Life, bought off a random street shop in Southeast Asia around 1999 or so.
A copy of Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, long ripped from the CD. Introduced me to Rom Di Prisco’s game soundtracks.
Red Hat Linux 6, alongside an issue of Byte magazine that featured it and pondered the future of desktop Linux.
If we count physical files, the in-lore magazine that came with Crusader: No Regret.
A pirated CD I received on my birthday, circa 1997 or so. It has several games on it: Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Z Blood Red Alert 1 To name the ones I recall off the top of my head. Loaded this...
A pirated CD I received on my birthday, circa 1997 or so. It has several games on it:
Heroes of Might and Magic 2
Z
Blood
Red Alert 1
To name the ones I recall off the top of my head. Loaded this in a DOS emulator on my Mac and got a few of these to work.
This is a very fun question, thank you! I have Pokemon Red and Green Rom copied from my cartridges, that's 1996. I have a drunk family video from my parents 1997, which is very fun. I also somehow...
This is a very fun question, thank you!
I have Pokemon Red and Green Rom copied from my cartridges, that's 1996. I have a drunk family video from my parents 1997, which is very fun. I also somehow still own the moonshine from that evening. The oldest photo file I have from my own hands is 2008. I keep all of these because they're of family value and childhood fun.
If handwriting counts as a file, I have some class notes from Meiji 29/1895. I have an original photograph from late 19th century and a sketch from prior to photographs, maybe mid 19th century, both of my family. Also, family and research related.
I have this CD with various backup things and while it was obviously burned at 2008, I believe many files to be around year 2000. I can for sure say I have photos there from 2001/02, I also have a...
I have this CD with various backup things and while it was obviously burned at 2008, I believe many files to be around year 2000. I can for sure say I have photos there from 2001/02, I also have a few install files that hint at 2002. Sadly nothing there has timestamp in the EXIF or in filename.
Just FYI I found Winamp plugins, DivX codecs, Counter Strike comics (obviously dating at around 2003), Morrowind and Baldur's Gate savefiles etc.
Actually I still have the PC case these files were actually in (on the HDD of course). Thinking about it, I may try and make it my next NAS case. First though I have to get out that nice Abit BP-6 motherboards with dual Celerons at 500MHz and GeForce 256 SDR. Those are some marvels of the past.
Not sure if this really counts, but it's a source file from BSD Unix 4.4, dated 10-12-1982. I have it because I was experimenting with old Unix systems on embedded environments, specifically...
Not sure if this really counts, but it's a source file from BSD Unix 4.4, dated 10-12-1982. I have it because I was experimenting with old Unix systems on embedded environments, specifically ESP32. I never got that project in any state that I was really happy with.
If I went down in the basement and rummaged through old media (I'd have to find and connect the floppy or tape drives to a modern system), I feel reasonably certain I could find something similar age or older, that I created myself.
I have some 5.25 floppy disks from the 80s that I keep, even though I don't have any way to read them, mostly because they have some of the early programs I wrote... my first programs were all...
I have some 5.25 floppy disks from the 80s that I keep, even though I don't have any way to read them, mostly because they have some of the early programs I wrote... my first programs were all stored on cassette and are long gone.
...but the oldest file that I have that I still USE, daily, is my .vimrc file, some lines of which are older than my oldest child, who is nearing 30. :) I've been loosely maintaining that file so long that I honestly don't even remember a good portion of what's in its 1600+ lines.
Technically the oldest file seems to be this one from May 1997 (SHOTSPED.DOC): I would measure the distance from the puck (or ball) to the goal, and then my friend Adam and I would take turns...
Technically the oldest file seems to be this one from May 1997 (SHOTSPED.DOC):
Shot Speed Formula
You take the distance (X- in feet) between where you are shooting and divide it by the amount of time (T- in seconds) it takes you to shoot from this length. You then take this and multiply it by 3,600. After you do that, you take this and divide it by 5,280. This will give you your shot’s speed in Miles Per Hour!
Formula:
((X/T)3600)/5280 = Shot speed (MPH)
(X = Distance between where you are starting from and target (Feet))
(T = Amount of time it takes puck to travel X (In seconds))
I would measure the distance from the puck (or ball) to the goal, and then my friend Adam and I would take turns using a stopwatch to time how long it took to reach the goal. Very accurate! I think I hit 50 mph or so.
These are technically older, but I also have a file for the Dragon Warrior book I started working on in 4th or 5th grade (1991 or 1992). The date says 1999, so I guess I last edited it during my junior year of high school:
CHAPTER I
The Prophesy Begins
Modify prologue when done (in a LONG time)!
Once upon a time, in the ninth century of Harpaulin times, and in the great country of Alefgard, there was a prophesy foreseen by many of the great King Lorik’s wise men. They counseled for many months, and eventually stumbled on this:
“Someday the Dragonlord will kidnap the princess Gwealin. After learning of this horrible deed, the great King Lorik will send forth his strongest and bravest messenger to get Erdrick, the bravest knight, and his party. After much time passes, the party returns kneeling before Lorik. Lorik tells the party their quest, and gives them each some money to spend on goods they will need. During their great quest they fight much evil, and Erdrick confronts the Dragonlord...”
King Lorik has been moping around for days, and no one, including him, knows why. So he calls for messenger Guecle.
“Guecle.”
“Yes your majesty?”
“I have a great deed for you. I want you to seek the help of Erdrick and his party just in case the legend comes true. The ball of light has already been stolen by the Dragonlord, and I don’t want anything else stolen by him. I have had a feeling of fear for days.”
And so forth for another 25 pages. So much of my psyche depended on that story, but then I just cast it aside...
Why do I keep these things? Why not? They take up almost no space and are fun to look back on whenever I do. Maybe my son will like to explore them someday, too.
Though I'm also a digital hoarder. I do my best to not be a physical hoarder despite those tendencies, but I don't fight it on my PC. As long as it's reasonably organized, I see no problem with digital hoarding.
I learned how to swap the music out on Dreamcast games back in 2000 and still have a CDI image file of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 with new music. Such hits as Scooter, Metallica, Phil Collins and Alice...
I learned how to swap the music out on Dreamcast games back in 2000 and still have a CDI image file of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 with new music.
Such hits as Scooter, Metallica, Phil Collins and Alice DJ really set the mood for a cartoon fight.
I have a 2 MP photo of both of my deceased dogs, hanging out on a couch in 2003. I keep it because I love and miss them both every day; even though I have a chaos gremlin, I never want to forget...
I have a 2 MP photo of both of my deceased dogs, hanging out on a couch in 2003. I keep it because I love and miss them both every day; even though I have a chaos gremlin, I never want to forget those two lovable babies.
It's a tie between either my high school assignment work or a copy of a fanmade music video for Lateralus by TOOL. (both circa 2012-ish.) I count that one even though I downloaded it more recently...
It's a tie between either my high school assignment work or a copy of a fanmade music video for Lateralus by TOOL. (both circa 2012-ish.) I count that one even though I downloaded it more recently since the video upload date was further back (and as a bonus, said video is near-impossible to find since TOOL's label went -hard- against copyright for a time.) I was always a data hoarder, but my hardware and choice of software backups didn't always agree with me.
My copy of Diablo 2 I think is the oldest of my own files. I also have an Amiga 500 with a whole box full of games and a hard drive expansion. I’ve booted it up a couple times to test out the...
My copy of Diablo 2 I think is the oldest of my own files.
I also have an Amiga 500 with a whole box full of games and a hard drive expansion. I’ve booted it up a couple times to test out the games, but the hard drive is untouched since my dad’s friend unplugged it 30+ years ago
Do scanned photos and documents count? If they do, the scans that my wife and I have from going through our parents' stuff are the oldest. That's what I see when I scroll all the way back in...
Do scanned photos and documents count? If they do, the scans that my wife and I have from going through our parents' stuff are the oldest. That's what I see when I scroll all the way back in Google Photos.
Although, technically I've taken photos of much older things at museums. I didn't try to file them under their original dates, though :-)
Actual files: perhaps some of the floppy disks from the Commodore 64 at my Mom's house are still readable? I won't know if I still have them unless I take them to a service to be scanned.
I have a copy of Witchhaven II: Blood Vengeance from 1996 on disc that I'm certain still works, as well as a floppy disk we got from sending in cereal box tops that has a bunch of classic PC games...
I have a copy of Witchhaven II: Blood Vengeance from 1996 on disc that I'm certain still works, as well as a floppy disk we got from sending in cereal box tops that has a bunch of classic PC games like ski free, pipe dream, jezz ball, chips challenge, etc. I'm not sure what the year is on that one.
I have some old family photos taken on one of the early digital cameras that used large memory cards or sometimes floppy disks. I also have schoolwork from mid-00's, most amusingly including the...
I have some old family photos taken on one of the early digital cameras that used large memory cards or sometimes floppy disks. I also have schoolwork from mid-00's, most amusingly including the very first programming I did, using Karel J Robot
I've still got the classic games though I'm sure the data integrity on those is questionable. I do still have some of my first BASIC games on my PC from the early 90s when I was teaching myself to...
I've still got the classic games though I'm sure the data integrity on those is questionable. I do still have some of my first BASIC games on my PC from the early 90s when I was teaching myself to code but I never finished them.
The oldest I can still find are dated around 1999 for the first website I ever made. I do still have some 3.5-inch floppy disks somewhere that are older but I haven't gotten around archiving them...
The oldest I can still find are dated around 1999 for the first website I ever made. I do still have some 3.5-inch floppy disks somewhere that are older but I haven't gotten around archiving them (if they still work) with some old games on them and maybe some other stuff.
I have a box of floppies that I think includes at least one from high school, so early to mid 90s. I also have a couple of Zip Disks for some reason, guess I must have had a machine at some point...
I have a box of floppies that I think includes at least one from high school, so early to mid 90s. I also have a couple of Zip Disks for some reason, guess I must have had a machine at some point with a Zip drive.
I have some 3.5" floppies. I can guess what's on them (couple games, some hand-written labels I believe with some of my first-time-through-college schoolwork), but the floppy drive I still have...
I have some 3.5" floppies. I can guess what's on them (couple games, some hand-written labels I believe with some of my first-time-through-college schoolwork), but the floppy drive I still have doesn't have a usb connection... :D
Oh, that's easy. It's one of these, which will mean something to a very small subset of UK viewers of a certain age, and absolutely nobody else. We were told it would be so important and literally...
Oh, that's easy. It's one of these, which will mean something to a very small subset of UK viewers of a certain age, and absolutely nobody else. We were told it would be so important and literally nobody ever asked me about it even once.
Somewhere in a box of old college paperwork, I've got a stack of Hollerith (punch) cards from the COBOL class that was required in engineering school, circa 1982, the last year that still had to...
Somewhere in a box of old college paperwork, I've got a stack of Hollerith (punch) cards from the COBOL class that was required in engineering school, circa 1982, the last year that still had to batch program. That class had everything to do with why I never had any ambition to develop software for a living.
I have copies of my old high school files, which I think are the oldest I could easily find. The file that I do revisit occasionally is my copy of my first Minecraft world that I have copied to...
I have copies of my old high school files, which I think are the oldest I could easily find.
The file that I do revisit occasionally is my copy of my first Minecraft world that I have copied to different locations over the years as I didn't want to lose it and my terrible asymmetric castle and other odd builds.
I believe I have some older drives at my parents house from when I was in elementary and middle school, but I'd have to look for them whenever I get back over there and set up a machine with an old mother borard and some IDE cables to see if they are readable.
I have various old files here and there. There are some backup CDs somewhere, but even in my Windows hard drive, I have some very old downloads, projects, etc. For instance, it didn't take me long...
I have various old files here and there. There are some backup CDs somewhere, but even in my Windows hard drive, I have some very old downloads, projects, etc. For instance, it didn't take me long to locate my oldest IRC logs which appear to have been last modified in August 2000. I was a minor at the time.
Due to the loss of our entire PC hard drive in April 1999 caused by the Chernobyl virus , this is about as old as it gets (RIP QBasic games I made!) All older computers have died and were disposed of long ago, including a black and white laptop that might have had interesting files.
Judging by file timestamps, my most recent full/from scratch installation of Windows was in 2009 (probably Windows 7).
Probably my first reddit post to pics in 2010. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dq3s3/i_got_bored_and_drew_a_guy_fighting_two/ I don't think I have anything from my older computers and it...
I don't think I have anything from my older computers and it was before I backed up stuff on the cloud. Maybe some images from Facebook might be older, but I don't have access to that anymore.
To use a different context to everyone else so far: I inherited some of my grandpas tools, which included several files from a long time ago.
I also have an old Black & Decker heat gun that was made in England. I doubt they make them there anymore.
My wife almost exclusively uses a sewing machine from 1879.
I also inherited some of her grandfather's tools, including some clamps that almost certainly predate WW2.
Same here! I have some files and hand-planing tools from my great grandfather. Not sure when they're from, some of them are probably more recent than I'd assume since he was a carpenter most of his life, but I have the cedar chest (actually just a storage chest) he made as a project when he was a boy. I believe it's dated 1912 or 1913 so he'd have been around 8 or 9. He became a carpenter and then a cabinetmaker.
I've got an entire MUD I worked on in 1992, still readable on a zipdisk as of last check a few months ago.
Dang, I just have a few text funnies I downloaded in 1992... why do I still have it? I honestly didn't realize I still had them until I just looked now. They consumes a grand total of 1.1 mb. Which while significant back then is anything but now.
What was the MUD?
I, too, am curious...
Forgotten Paradigm, small LPMud, heavily modified.
Great timing - I just discovered an old microSD card of mine taped to the side of an old external hard drive that I had in storage. The card was originally installed in my Motorola Razr from ~2006. I think the oldest picture that survived on there from several cleanups and phone swaps is from 2008. Tons of pictures from my junior and senior year of high school, so now I’m just figuring out a more permanent storage solution in my tiny home lab.
Ninja edit to be a buzzkill: my birth certificate ;)
Super fun question!
The very oldest file I still have on my computer is also the first file I personally created (albeit with my dad's help!).
It's a drawing I made on May 7th, 1988, when I was two years old. My parents bought their first computer, a Mac Plus, that year and this is probably one of the first files any of us ever created on it.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what program it was made in and no idea how to open it.
I have 11 other drawings I made in 1988, plus two I made in 1994, and I have no idea how to view any of them (except as plaintext, which is gibberish). It's a bummer, but I keep hanging on to them just in case I ever figure out what file format they are.
I got curious and did some googling, there are a variety of utilities out there that seem to support ancient mac image conversions. There are a few formats.
https://convertio.co/mac-converter/
https://github.com/victorlobe/PICTomatic
Ooo, thank you! After some mucking around, I ended up using deark to identify the files and get them converted to PNGs.
So, here it is: the oldest file on my computer. I guess I'm not sure what I was expecting, lol.
A few of the others I converted: 1, 2, 3 (I think my mom must have helped me with the hands on this last one, since it turns out she was shockingly good at drawing with a mouse in 1988.)
Looks like art to me!
This is pretty awesome. I'm glad you were able to access them finally. Tbh, I'd consider printing and framing the first just as a conversational piece.
I've got a copy of Windows 3.11 still in shrink wrap.
Every time I get a new computer, I make a point of installing my favorite childhood games, SimCity 2000 and Civilization II. I also transfer copies of some original save files from the time, since I think they're cool time-capsule artifacts. A few were re-saved after they were originally created, but the oldest I can find right now are some SimCity saves from June of 2000 (though the most interesting to me is the Civ 2 game I played the evening of 9/11 to try to take my mind off things).
My oldest file is an IRC log from 2001! I keep a bunch of them. Not sure why, any attempt at reading them always leads to massive amounts of cringe, especially since a decent chunk of them were my first attempts at wooing a girl.
Still, deleting them would feel like deleting my childhood...
I think physical media is kind of cheating, but if that counts I have X-Wing on a stack of floppy disks somewhere.
The oldest files I have that are currently in my filesystem are my copies of my homework assignments from highschool. Not sure why I kept them, but maybe one day I will read them for fun. They have been transferred across many disks/systems over the years through. The oldest file still in active use is probably my /var/log/pacman.log that has been there for the ~15 years my Arch system has been up.
I took a backup of my MS-DOS box when I finally shut it down decades ago. It contains some very old files from very old games and programs. The oldest file that I think is believable has a 'Date Modified' of Thu 23 Apr 1987 6:19:42 AM MICPRINT.ESI It is from a very old command line based (if I remember correctly) family feud game.
Around 2-3yrs ago, I found the 3.5" diskette that contained my first website. Naturally, I bought an external USB diskette drive and transferred the files to my cloud storage for safe keeping. Anyway, the oldest file is from January 16, 1999. I was 11yrs old, almost 12yo. And it's a non-animated GIF of Mewtwo. Because my first website, all in handcrafted HTML, was about Pokemon. Here's what it looked like (at least in a modern browser), with that Mewtwo image.
On this machine, one of the first C programs I wrote on 2000-10-13 to indent a file with spaces.
I think I've got a few Amiga floppies with OctaMED, Fantavision and other early teens experiments on somewhere. They'd be early 90s but reading them would be anyone's guess.
I'd have a heap of stuff from the late 90s and on and probably a copy of the anarchist cookbook that got passed around highschool. I don't know anyone that actually used anything in it and I should probably delete it.
I wrote a fair amount of fiction stories in the 90s to about 2005. The oldest files I have are from 1993. I admit I don't know why I keep them except for sentiment, and honestly I would probably be a bit embarrassed by some of it at this point -- if I bothered re-reading it, which I probably won't.
I personally? Have high school classwork from 2004 backed up. My parents have backups of files dating back to the mid '90s (though I made those backups years ago, and they haven't been checked since, so their viability is an open question at the moment).
I keep this stuff around because backups of old files are negligible in terms of storage load, and it would be more effort to triage and clean them up than just to store them forever. Am I ever going to have a good reason to reread that essay about The Catcher in the Rye from 10th grade English? No, absolutely not (in fact, I'll definitely be happier if I don't), but I can't say that with confidence about everything in there, and there's too much of it for it to be worthwhile to sort through it all.
Toss up between:
A pirated CD I received on my birthday, circa 1997 or so. It has several games on it:
Heroes of Might and Magic 2
Z
Blood
Red Alert 1
To name the ones I recall off the top of my head. Loaded this in a DOS emulator on my Mac and got a few of these to work.
I'm not sure
I have a bunch of old IDE drives from computers my old high school threw out, and my grandma's old computer.
This is a very fun question, thank you!
I have Pokemon Red and Green Rom copied from my cartridges, that's 1996. I have a drunk family video from my parents 1997, which is very fun. I also somehow still own the moonshine from that evening. The oldest photo file I have from my own hands is 2008. I keep all of these because they're of family value and childhood fun.
If handwriting counts as a file, I have some class notes from Meiji 29/1895. I have an original photograph from late 19th century and a sketch from prior to photographs, maybe mid 19th century, both of my family. Also, family and research related.
I have this CD with various backup things and while it was obviously burned at 2008, I believe many files to be around year 2000. I can for sure say I have photos there from 2001/02, I also have a few install files that hint at 2002. Sadly nothing there has timestamp in the EXIF or in filename.
Just FYI I found Winamp plugins, DivX codecs, Counter Strike comics (obviously dating at around 2003), Morrowind and Baldur's Gate savefiles etc.
Actually I still have the PC case these files were actually in (on the HDD of course). Thinking about it, I may try and make it my next NAS case. First though I have to get out that nice Abit BP-6 motherboards with dual Celerons at 500MHz and GeForce 256 SDR. Those are some marvels of the past.
Not sure if this really counts, but it's a source file from BSD Unix 4.4, dated 10-12-1982. I have it because I was experimenting with old Unix systems on embedded environments, specifically ESP32. I never got that project in any state that I was really happy with.
If I went down in the basement and rummaged through old media (I'd have to find and connect the floppy or tape drives to a modern system), I feel reasonably certain I could find something similar age or older, that I created myself.
I have some 5.25 floppy disks from the 80s that I keep, even though I don't have any way to read them, mostly because they have some of the early programs I wrote... my first programs were all stored on cassette and are long gone.
...but the oldest file that I have that I still USE, daily, is my .vimrc file, some lines of which are older than my oldest child, who is nearing 30. :) I've been loosely maintaining that file so long that I honestly don't even remember a good portion of what's in its 1600+ lines.
Technically the oldest file seems to be this one from May 1997 (SHOTSPED.DOC):
I would measure the distance from the puck (or ball) to the goal, and then my friend Adam and I would take turns using a stopwatch to time how long it took to reach the goal. Very accurate! I think I hit 50 mph or so.
There's also this adorable gem tracking my hockey stats and future hockey career (posted before here): https://i.imgur.com/L8KqLJr.png. Alas, it was not an accurate predictor.
These are technically older, but I also have a file for the Dragon Warrior book I started working on in 4th or 5th grade (1991 or 1992). The date says 1999, so I guess I last edited it during my junior year of high school:
And so forth for another 25 pages. So much of my psyche depended on that story, but then I just cast it aside...
Why do I keep these things? Why not? They take up almost no space and are fun to look back on whenever I do. Maybe my son will like to explore them someday, too.
Though I'm also a digital hoarder. I do my best to not be a physical hoarder despite those tendencies, but I don't fight it on my PC. As long as it's reasonably organized, I see no problem with digital hoarding.
I learned how to swap the music out on Dreamcast games back in 2000 and still have a CDI image file of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 with new music.
Such hits as Scooter, Metallica, Phil Collins and Alice DJ really set the mood for a cartoon fight.
:/
My PegasusMail inbox file(s), from 1994. Converted to mbox format a few years ago, so I can read it.
I have a 2 MP photo of both of my deceased dogs, hanging out on a couch in 2003. I keep it because I love and miss them both every day; even though I have a chaos gremlin, I never want to forget those two lovable babies.
It's a tie between either my high school assignment work or a copy of a fanmade music video for Lateralus by TOOL. (both circa 2012-ish.) I count that one even though I downloaded it more recently since the video upload date was further back (and as a bonus, said video is near-impossible to find since TOOL's label went -hard- against copyright for a time.) I was always a data hoarder, but my hardware and choice of software backups didn't always agree with me.
My copy of Diablo 2 I think is the oldest of my own files.
I also have an Amiga 500 with a whole box full of games and a hard drive expansion. I’ve booted it up a couple times to test out the games, but the hard drive is untouched since my dad’s friend unplugged it 30+ years ago
Do scanned photos and documents count? If they do, the scans that my wife and I have from going through our parents' stuff are the oldest. That's what I see when I scroll all the way back in Google Photos.
Although, technically I've taken photos of much older things at museums. I didn't try to file them under their original dates, though :-)
Actual files: perhaps some of the floppy disks from the Commodore 64 at my Mom's house are still readable? I won't know if I still have them unless I take them to a service to be scanned.
I have a copy of Witchhaven II: Blood Vengeance from 1996 on disc that I'm certain still works, as well as a floppy disk we got from sending in cereal box tops that has a bunch of classic PC games like ski free, pipe dream, jezz ball, chips challenge, etc. I'm not sure what the year is on that one.
I have some old family photos taken on one of the early digital cameras that used large memory cards or sometimes floppy disks. I also have schoolwork from mid-00's, most amusingly including the very first programming I did, using Karel J Robot
I've still got the classic games though I'm sure the data integrity on those is questionable. I do still have some of my first BASIC games on my PC from the early 90s when I was teaching myself to code but I never finished them.
The oldest I can still find are dated around 1999 for the first website I ever made. I do still have some 3.5-inch floppy disks somewhere that are older but I haven't gotten around archiving them (if they still work) with some old games on them and maybe some other stuff.
I have a box of floppies that I think includes at least one from high school, so early to mid 90s. I also have a couple of Zip Disks for some reason, guess I must have had a machine at some point with a Zip drive.
I have some 3.5" floppies. I can guess what's on them (couple games, some hand-written labels I believe with some of my first-time-through-college schoolwork), but the floppy drive I still have doesn't have a usb connection... :D
Oh, that's easy. It's one of these, which will mean something to a very small subset of UK viewers of a certain age, and absolutely nobody else. We were told it would be so important and literally nobody ever asked me about it even once.
The oldest digital file I have is this one from 1997
Somewhere in a box of old college paperwork, I've got a stack of Hollerith (punch) cards from the COBOL class that was required in engineering school, circa 1982, the last year that still had to batch program. That class had everything to do with why I never had any ambition to develop software for a living.
I have copies of my old high school files, which I think are the oldest I could easily find.
The file that I do revisit occasionally is my copy of my first Minecraft world that I have copied to different locations over the years as I didn't want to lose it and my terrible asymmetric castle and other odd builds.
I believe I have some older drives at my parents house from when I was in elementary and middle school, but I'd have to look for them whenever I get back over there and set up a machine with an old mother borard and some IDE cables to see if they are readable.
I have various old files here and there. There are some backup CDs somewhere, but even in my Windows hard drive, I have some very old downloads, projects, etc. For instance, it didn't take me long to locate my oldest IRC logs which appear to have been last modified in August 2000. I was a minor at the time.
Due to the loss of our entire PC hard drive in April 1999 caused by the Chernobyl virus , this is about as old as it gets (RIP QBasic games I made!) All older computers have died and were disposed of long ago, including a black and white laptop that might have had interesting files.
Judging by file timestamps, my most recent full/from scratch installation of Windows was in 2009 (probably Windows 7).
Probably my first reddit post to pics in 2010. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dq3s3/i_got_bored_and_drew_a_guy_fighting_two/
I don't think I have anything from my older computers and it was before I backed up stuff on the cloud. Maybe some images from Facebook might be older, but I don't have access to that anymore.
Edit: I realized I still have the game Deadly Tide on CD from 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Tide
The cutscenes from that game still hold up imo.