Ah! Would that wallet.dat work with the latest iteration of Bitcoin Core or at least be able to 'upgrade' so it could using progressive versions of the core?
I would be pretty sure that it would work (or if not then that at least any private keys could be fairly easily extracted from it).
Mmmm. So would have been usable unless one had deliberately made them unusable by using them with a newer node. encrypting them and deliberately destroying all other copies. Thanks for that info - obvious to the old-timers I guess!
