My favourite 'DIY kit' is a well-filled dumpster with a variety of electrical, electronical and mechanical gizmo's, some of them broken beyond repair but good for parts, others seemingly unscathed but undocumented, some of them mysterious. Start young, lug home that 40kg beast of a broken television and get it to work again, next time take home that enormous speaker box, fix it and put it under the television - we're talking the early 80's here - and you're the first one on the block with a 'home entertainment' set. Play your Rockpalast Nacht [1] tapes on the thing while busily working on another mechanical marvel you came upon while cycling from school. I spent hours taking parts out of equipment beyond repair, collecting it in those cabinets with small drawers. I'm still using those parts now, more than 40 years later.<p>I'm a bit older now but for the rest not much has changed. Nearly all equipment around me is of such origin whether that be the stand-up desk I'm standing at (electrical fault, easily fixed) or the 27" iMac ('broken' videocard, 5 minutes in the oven later is worked) or the monitor next to it (2 broken capacitors in the power supply).<p>So, to answer the question, unless you happen upon a multimeter, oscilloscope, soldering iron and BGA rework station and fine-mechanical tool set while cycling past those are the things to buy to start yourself off as a scrounger, as someone who surfs the detritus of the consumption society. Just like - according to the crooks in the Donald Duck comics - 'stolen food tastes twice as good' you'll get far more satisfaction from using resuscitated hardware than from yet another unbox-try-put_in_drawer session.<p>[1] <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockpalast_Nacht" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockpalast_Nacht</a>