When you want to look at old files you really should know the difference between:
svn cat http://server/svn/project/file -r 1234
and
svn cat http://server/svn/project/file@1234
The first version looks at the path that is now available as http://server/svn/project/file and retrieves that file as it was in revision 1234. (So this syntax does not work after a file delete).
The second syntax gets the file that was available as http://server/svn/project/file in revision 1234. So this syntax DOES work on deleted files.
You can even combine these methods to retrieve a file that was available in revision 2345 as http://server/svn/project/file but with the contents as it had in 1234 with:
svn cat http://server/svn/project/file@2345 -r 1234