Bit of a long shot but worth a go...
I remember reading about bitcoin when it first launched on BBC news (I think this was 2009), downloading the software and mining some coins using what I think was the original wallet software.
I did this for a few weeks and remember finding some rewards... how many I'm really not sure, I think they were only worth about $15 in total at the time.
Unfortunately the 500gb hard drive in this computer has since been re-formatted and is now > 80% full of .mkv movies.
I've tried the recovery instruction in
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=22697.0 basically searching with a hex editor for the string "01 03 6B 65 79 41 04" and found nothing.
This seems to be for a 2011 wallet - I was just wanting to confirm that the very first client software would have the same instructions and if I can't find this string on the hard drive the coins have definitely gone?
Thanks!