Ferguson BigBoard revived!

I owned a BigBoard in college, but gave it away when I moved from

to Boston. It is a pretty cool SBC with integrated single density floppy controller and video. A friend (thanks Bob) gave me an old BigBoard which he had laying around a while back and I started making it work again last night. So far, the crystal circuit was dead (temporarily replaced with an oscillator until new parts arrive), an address buffer was dead (purchased a NOS 74LS241 off the shelf at the local electronics store, mounted on a piece of cardboard which is all faded from age), the video drive XOR was dead (replaced with new 74LS86 from my stock bins), and all the ICs needed to be re-seated in their sockets. So far, I have the video section working and the board boots the system monitor, displaying the output on the overly tiny 3" diagonal CRT, which is the only monitor that survived my numerous moves over the years. I've purchased a new-to-me monitor for use on this board, but this tiny one will have to due until it arrives. The next step will be to attach a SSSD 8" floppy and if that works with some scratch floppies, I will try to boot the CP/M system floppies that I got from Don Maslin oh so long ago. I still have a couple of articles about modifying the BigBoard to use a double density floppy drive. I may have to try that at some point in the future. --tom