[mutagen]

Steve of BMOW has done several amazing hardware projects including a homemade CPU from logic chips and CLPDs, Mac floppy emulators, and more. Rather than link them here, browse the links on his sidebar and read the descriptions of each project.

>Schematics? Forget it. Everything was built incrementally, one wire at a time, while staring at chip datasheets. It’s an organic creation.

Yeah, that's real hardware hacking right there.