In reality it is mostly a large pile of e-waste that has very little value to anyone other than a hobbyist such as myself. I have been correctly accused of being a hoarder. Most of it is stacked out in our airplane hangar. I will probably start putting things that might have some value to others up on eBay when we are ready to move to a cheaper part of the country.
I am familiar with pre-IDE hard drives. I still have at least a couple MFM controllers and hard drives in my assortment of vintage computer equipment.
You leveraged your skill sets nicely to find and improve employment.
This is not a completely accurate assessment... I spent approximately ten years in a family business that was mostly a giant pain in the rear but did get me to expand my horizons a bit. I did try to take classes that might have eventually helped me get an engineering degree. What I knew about computers before working as a lab assistant mostly came from working with computers outside of an educational setting. I got my job as a Hazmat Fire Officer because I have always been extremely good at taking any type of standardized test... which civil service tests used to be.
My firefighting experience reminds me a little of my experience flying. By the time I jumped through the hoops to get my private pilot's license I had already been flying hang gliders and ultralight aircraft for years. I got a 100% on my written test by reading books, watching VHS tapes and getting a sign off from the instructor who I logged dual time with. My first solo in a General Aviation aircraft was anti-climatic because I already had at least a couple hundred hours in my little ultralight airplane. Even my first solo in the ultralight by accident but anti-climatic because of all the time that I already had flying hang gliders.
I didn't mention that I spent quite a bit of my childhood interested in chemistry. I learned as much from this as I did in college chemistry classes that I took along with continuing education in Hazmat operations.
I didn't pay much attention to my teachers in school, but was clever enough to get good grades anyway. I always had my own agendas from the time that I was a child. I have been thought to have attention deficit disorder and hyper-activity along with being somewhere on the Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale. But they did not diagnose this type of thing when I was a child or put me on drugs which I am grateful for. I get along well with others for the most part.
I had no idea that my brain worked differently from others until I got a work study job helping people with learning disorders. This caused me to become interested in the subject. Later in my life I went to a mental health professional who felt that drugs would be helpful to me. But the drugs suggested would all have caused me to lose my FAA Medical Certificate.
I am not completely normal but have learned to live with my eccentricities as have my wife, children, and grandchildren. We all have our crosses to bear. I feel very fortunate that I am able to troubleshoot and figure out how to fix nearly anything.
Sorry for another meandering and lengthy post.
My ad hoc kitchen chemistry yielded all manner of interesting things. Hydrogen sulfide, bottle rockets, hydrogen balloons, nitroglycerin, contact explosive. It was useful experience for my college labs later.