Hm, so there is still some juice for TC16+ (14 years: 2024-2038), using ext4 driver without journal-ing on USB.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.9-Deprecates-EXT2 "The EXT2 file-system has been around for thirty years, it's been over two decades since EXT3 and a decade and a half since EXT4 has been stable in the Linux kernel. EXT2 use has been on the decline and likely just in use for accessing old storage devices / legacy Linux distribution installs. It's being deprecated now though since the file-system driver doesn't support dates beyond the year 2038"