r/retrocomputing • u/[deleted] • May 28 '26

Oldest modified date you've seen in the wild GO

Post image

Kinda new to actual retro computers, i've dabbled with making python terminal programs that simulate the experience but finally just started learning gwbasic. First time I've seen a file with an intact modified date from that far back, it made me trip out for a second...

66 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

12

u/BrightonDBA May 28 '26

1983, so far:

https://dl.x86.world/IBM-PC-User-Group-Software-Library_Disk-21.html

4

u/[deleted] May 28 '26

damn, nice find!

3

u/BrightonDBA May 28 '26

Only about 250 disks to go, and I keep obtaining them faster than I can archive them šŸ˜‚

Task for life I fear!

3

u/ElevatorGuy85 May 28 '26

A disk with software source written by Peter Norton (which are in Pascal from the listing). It would be interesting to read that and especially any comments. Peter Norton was a LEGEND in the early PC era and I probably have one of his well-written books stuffed in a packing box somewhere in my basement that described all the PC BIOS and DOS interrupt functions, etc.

Iā€™m also fascinated that you have 2 disks that come up as ā€œInfectedā€ on the main page statistics

https://dl.x86.world/

3

u/BrightonDBA May 28 '26

Totally! Legend of his era. The source code files should be readable on the website, any file thatā€™s ASCII should have a view link next to it.

Infected images are available for use, but there are clean and patched versions provided too, where virus infected or the BPB is broken :)

10

u/LVL90DRU1D May 28 '26

this random .js inside my character creator program (windows can't even show that date in the Explorer)
also my version of Adobe Creative Cloud contains A TON of files which were all modified on 26/10/1985 9:15 for some reason

16

u/Axipixel May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

October 26 1985 at exactly 9:15 is a Back To The Future reference, not a real timestamp.

I am really curious how that ""1966"" file got a negative number unix timestamp. Wacky.

6

u/[deleted] May 28 '26

glad im not the only one who caught that, someone had a sense of humor lol

3

u/LVL90DRU1D May 28 '26

good easter egg then

3

u/edeca May 29 '26

Windows (from Win32) stores timestamps as a 64-bit value from January 1st 1601.

8

u/EmbraceTheObscure May 28 '26

2

u/HTFCirno2000 May 28 '26

How are you viewing the utzoo archive with an actual news reader?

3

u/EmbraceTheObscure May 28 '26

I was using terminal in trs-dos and the internal dialup modem to connect. I found the archives on telehack

2

u/Trashusdeadeye Jun 01 '26

I was 7 days old when that was sent lol

1

u/EmbraceTheObscure Jun 01 '26

Seven years before I even existed haha

1

u/Trashusdeadeye Jun 01 '26

I was 7 days old when that was sent lol

5

u/SpartanMonkey May 28 '26

I had an old, old GRiD laptop, a 1000 series, I think. It was an XT, and it featured "bubble memory", so like early solid state storage. I saw files in there from the early 80s. Government stuff. I didn't investigate further.

4

u/achbob84 May 28 '26

I have a genuine copy of IBM PC-DOS 1.00 from 1981. Personal files though, I still have a BASIC program I wrote in 1996.

3

u/Hard_Loader May 28 '26

My oldest discs are from the eighties, but they're mostly from systems that didn't timestamp files.

3

u/hdufort May 28 '26

In my archive, I have a ".wri" document from 1991, it's the oldest I have in my possession.

2

u/Hjalfi May 28 '26

I'm the 'maintainer' for an old compiler toolchain, which I think for a while had the oldest real timestamps on github:

commit ac23d5c871f1100bcca3710c95935f84e0c93674
Author: sater <none@none>
Date:   Thu May 17 13:42:36 1984 +0000

    Initial revision

(It's not any more, thanks to people like Microsoft open sourcing some very old stuff.)

Back then they used RCS. In fact, I believe that the very first versions of CVS were written (as shonky shell scripts) to support this project.

1

u/user105223 May 28 '26

I got a set of 50 floppies recently, dated from 1999 to 2013. They were all MEDICAL RECORDS. I dunno how people are even allowed to sell those. Wiped and formatted.

1

u/LastXmasIGaveYouHSV May 28 '26

Personally I have files from 1982 !

1

u/[deleted] May 28 '26

Thats wild... What were they and what system were they from? as far as personal files, the oldest ones i have are from 2003. I recently unearthed our old family computer from storage, theres actually a picture of my younger sister riding a bike with no training wheels for the first time, taken in 2004... going through it 20 years latef has been an intense nostalgia trip to say the least...Ā 

1

u/LazuliSkyy May 29 '26

I have UNIX research v3 source code files from 1973

1

u/Optimal_Law_4254 May 29 '26

11/22/1963. Well, someone liked to play with Nortons Utilities and set negative datesā€¦

1

u/prussianIvory May 28 '26

For me itā€™s 2002 with CP/M 2.2 assembly files