The Silicon Valley-based expert collects old machines, and has more than 3,000 of them. He's also the brains behind Vintage Tech, a data retrieval service promising to get back that crucial information no matter how outmoded the software.
Ismail, 38, did actually sell a computer once. It was 1983, and his mother made him get rid of his Mattel Aquarius when he upgraded to an Apple II Plus. He was devastated.
"I really regret selling it now - I had such an attachment to it," he says. "After that I vowed that I would never get rid of an old computer when I upgraded, because I felt so bad about it. That's when I became an accumulator."
By the time he was 17 he had at least eight machines, and to keep his mother happy he told her he would start a museum one day. "I was mostly joking, but then the idea of being an archivist started forming," he says. "I collected software and very meticulously maintained it. I would collect applications I would never use, but there was something about it that compelled me to hold on.
"I got one computer from an old boss, and then another time I was at a car boot sale in 1993 or 1994 where there were loads of computers from the 80s for sale. I was so excited that I walked away at first, because I didn't want to tip the guy off that I wanted them all. I filled my car boot with 22 computers - all the ones I would lust after when I was a kid."
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A lot of Vintage Tech's business involves lengthy patent battles, but Ismail also loans his materials out for films and documentaries. One of his Teletype machines featured in Richard Gere's 2006 film The Hoax, while some of his older Apple computers were used in a documentary on the early days of the tech revolution, with Ismail even standing in as the typing hands of Steve Wozniak.
He stores everything in a huge warehouse on the aptly named Research Drive, on the eastern edge of Silicon Valley. The shelving goes from floor to ceiling in a soaring 18-foot high space.
"Keep in mind that a computer can be anything from a refrigerator-sized beast to a handheld device," he says. "I have a 45,000 square foot warehouse and it is wall-to-wall shelving."
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He's also something of a second-hand salesman, brokering deals on rare and collectable computers. He's been involved in the sales of six Apple I computers, but admits the $20,000 tag puts it out of his price range. He hasn't given up hope though, and believes somehow fate will one day bring them together.
