By Courtney Tanner | The Salt Lake Tribune | Photo by Dan Hixson | The University of Utah

Storage room 3495 at his University of Utah computing lab had gotten so packed full of cardboard boxes, Aleks Maricq jokes it had become hard to even see the floor.

It rivaled a game of Jenga — or maybe Tetris — as the research associate took down one box after another to clear it out. There were old cords from unknown sources and mountains of papers that had been dumped from a former professor’s file cabinet, including old drawings from his kids and saved plane ticket stubs.

A few boxes in, though, Maricq stumbled on something unusual, a find older than the game of Tetris itself (created in 1985).

“I knew it was very old, likely very rare,” he said of his summer discovery. “And then after a quick Google search, I realized just how rare.”

It’s so old and rare, in fact, that the U. no longer has the computing equipment needed to confirm it is what the label says it is: “UNIX Original from Bell Labs V4.”

The 9-track magnetic tape discovery included the helpful note “see manual for format.” The less helpful part? No manual was found with it.

Read more at SLTrib.com.

This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.