If you really want to satisfy that itch you should try building a Forth computer from scratch. Back in the 80s a friend showed me how to build a Forth CPU from PLAs (might have been some earlier cheaper form of programmable logic, heheh) and SRAM plus a little random logic. By the end of the weekend we were running floppy drives and a crt with it.
I've written a ton of Forths over the years in different languages, and every time I run into an article about it I get the itch to do another one.