Ferguson Big Board

In its most popular form, the fully assembled and tested Big Board need only be connected to a power supply, one or two eight inch floppy disk drives, a composite monitor, and an ASCII encoded keyboard in order to provide a fully functioning system.

[6] While not directly supported by CP/M, the extra memory could be used to implement a ram disk, caching of the operating system image (to greatly improve warm boot time), or a print spooler.

It also featured a small breadboard area that allowed for many simple upgrades to be performed without the addition of daughter boards.

The magazine regularly featured user reports, hardware upgrade articles, and reviews of third party products.

AB Computer Products sold enclosures, monitors, and pre-punched I/O panels targeted at Big Board users.

D&W Associates of Rome, NY sold monitors, ASCII-encoded keyboards, and power supplies targeted to the Big Board market.

Paradise Valley Electronics of Moscow, ID sold a version of FORTH, as well as graphics upgrades and utility software for the Big Board.

Kenmore Computer Technologies (from Buffalo, NY) offered the Ztime-I calendar/clock board kit and software.

Calendar/clock circuits enabled early computers to time-stamp data and perform time-sensitive tasks with accuracy.