If you want to read an irreverent and unorthodox hardware hacking manual check out Nicolas Collins’ Original Hacking Manual. Weighing in at 128 PDF pages, this book is geared toward motivating beginning electronics experimenters to explore uses and abuses for common electronic components. Topics include basic electronics through integrated circuits and circuit bending of all varieties. It is a manual he wrote and self-published in 2004 for his hacking course and first workshops that eventually became his book Handmade Electronic Music, as published by Routledge. Nicolas writes: “This version includes my terrible drawings, rendered obsolete by Simon Lonergan’s beautiful contributions to the Routledge editions, but perversely missed by some veterans of the early workshops.”
It’s replete with “rules” designed to keep the nascent hacker out of (too much) trouble. It is one of several interesting works made available courtesy of Nicolas Collins’ website.