The incredible Bigboard single-board computer

Launched in 1980, the Bigboard was one of a number of single-board computers - bare boards that shipped with everything needed to run a microcomputer, but which didn't however come with a case, a power supply, a monitor or a keyboard, although these were all available as extras. 

Designed by Jim Ferguson and manufactured and supplied by Digital Research Computers of Texas[source: https://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Folder/Digital%20Research%20Computers/History/History.htm] - a company that had nothing to do with the other Digital Research, the makers of CP/M, the Bigboard was nevertheless "designed from scratch" to run CP/M.

Its size of 8½" x 18¾" was apparently intended to match Shugart's 801 or 851 8" floppy disk drives.

It was also initially supplied in kit form - DRC was primarily a retailer of electronics components which it sold via mail order - and as such it was advertised as "being suitable for people with some hardware/software experience". 

Apparently when first launched in the US, even the components and integrated-circuits were extras, with the board arriving with absolutely nothing on - just a parts list and a schematic diagram[source: https://www.stevenjohnson.com/big-board.htm].

However, in the UK it was also available assembled and fully tested via its sole European distributor, Maclin-Zand Electronics of London, although that was still the board only - the purchaser still had to connect a power supply, put it in a case and either find a terminal or buy a keyboard and monitor.

Even so, a working system - the board, serial I/O, power supply and a copy of CP/M 2.2 - could be cobbled together for around £715, which is around [[715|1981]] in [[now]].

Thanks to the apparent success of the Bigboard, Jim Ferguson eventually incorporated his own company - Cal-Tex - in 1982[source: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/cal-tex-computers-and-russel-smith.56988/] in order to produce the follow-up machine, the Bigboard II - a single-board computer incorporating many of the "extras" available on the original, as well as a faster 4MHz Z80 CPU.

Its success was at least in part because a version of the original Bigboard was used as the basis of [=pcn_1984-07-14_002|Xerox's 820 micro] - complete with the relatively pedestrian 2.5MHz speed of the Bigboard's [!Z80] processor.

The Bigboard was reviewed in March 1981's PCW, with Dr. Neil Cryer - who had first encountered the micro at the Breadboard Exhibition in November 1980 - concluding:

~"Overall I consider Bigboard to offer good value for money. I found it very easy to set up and use and I suspect that for those with some experience it would be fairly straightfoward to build it from a kit. The lack of a bus arrangement limits expansion considerably but then you do get quite a system for your money. The ability to use CP/M makes an enormous number of packages available to the user and that, coupled with the 64K memory, must be one of the strongest points in Bigboard's favour[source: "Bench test: Bigboard", PCW, March 1981, pp. 68-69]".

Its relative success also led to the creation of an entire magazine devoted to the micro, with Micro Cornucopia starting out in July 1981 as a "journal of Bigboard users".