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Well, at the very least, they had to develop enough technology on their own to assimilate their first culture. Unless it was a barbarians vs. Rome situation, which doesn't fit what little I remember of their origin story.
I would think that it would be easiest to start them with no research ability, but already have basic assimilation techs.
If you copy most of the components and "borgify" them (improve their performance slightly, make them regenerate and only available to borg), then you would have a really neat system.
The borg would capture a shield generator I, and they would analyse to get a Borgified Shield Generator I, which fits in with the rest of their tech.