Reading though the comments, I wish there was an easier way to fabricate electronics. Even etching a basic board is an error prone process involving nasty chemicals, and surface mount soldering can be like threading a needle without hands. I don't know a solution to this, maybe more home pick & place robotic arms and using reflow ovens, and some kind of way to print on the paste, who knows. It is a shame that this has all escaped an easier DIY level of skills. I want to be able to do this sort of thing, but it very quickly approaches the point where the time and cost involved to do it outweighs looking around to have someone build something for me instead.
It's not building a computer, but there was a post on here a few days ago about a group creating 'sticker circuitry', which essentially consisted of a set of stickers that you could put together to make simple circuits. Seems like a cool idea that gets down to the fundamentals while taking out the hard-to-approach, error-prone aspect.
