Martin writes only: "大した 'immense, important, serious, very', cf. adverb 大して―these being the only forms of what would appear to be a defective durative stative verb(al noun) *大する 'looms large'"
Anonymous
My dictionaries don't list an etymology for 大した
Anonymous
It seems to be surprisingly recent
Anonymous
The earliest citation in 日本国語大辞典 is 1885
Anonymous
8:53 PM
And for 大して, the earliest citation is from 1869頃
Anonymous
Maybe someone just started saying one or the other and it caught on, and the other developed by analogy