I learnt everything I know about computers from reading Byte magazine cover to cover as a teenager. Steve Ciracia's Circuit Cellar was always the highlight for me.

My favourite project was the video camera he made from a 64kb DRAM chip from Micro called the IS32. Rather that the usual opaque cap, it had a transparent quartz lid. Photons accelerated the charge leaking from DRAM cells. So by writing ones, waiting a calculated period, then reading out the new DRAM values, you could get a binary image. Repeat for multiple exposure periods for greyscale.

As a 15 year old, I bought one of these chips, designed my own circuit board, drew the tracks with etch-resistant pen from Tandy Radio Shack, etched it in ferric chloride, hand drilled the holes, and soldered the components. Needless to say, it didn't work. And without access to an oscilloscope, I never managed to figure out the problem.

Part 1: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-09

Part 2: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-10

Here are PDFs,including circuit diagrams and code listing:

ftp://alvarestech.com/pub/electronics/circuit_cellar/BYTE_Projects/D-Cam1.pdf

ftp://alvarestech.com/pub/electronics/circuit_cellar/BYTE_Projects/D-Cam2.pdf

(for those interested in computer nostalgia, the first of those full issues was a special on portable computing. And the second is a mammoth 480 page issue with dozens of articles on all aspects of the Unix operating system).