The BBS, 1978
Before the web there were bulletin boards: one phone line, one caller at a time, ANSI art menus and door games. This era dials a simulated Maximus BBS on a US Robotics 14.4 modem and walks the whole call, from carrier tone to logoff.
Classic shells track · 5 missions · boss mission, no written exam · free, no signup. Everything below runs in the browser terminal on the SERVBG home page.
What you will do
- message boards
MBBSes were the internet before the internet. FidoNet linked 35,000 systems by 1995.
- file downloads
F1200 baud modem: 1MB took 2 hours. Shareware and freeware spread this way.
- door games
DDoor games ran as external programs. Some had thousands of daily players.
- play LORD (door game)
GLegend of the Red Dragon — most played BBS door game. Written in 1989.
- Boss missionshow help / menu
?SysOps ran BBSes from home on their own phone lines. Some had 50+ dedicated lines.
Certificate
This is one of the original eras, so it ends at the boss mission: there is no written exam and no certificate for it. Clearing the boss marks the era complete and banks the XP. The expansion tracks (networking, Cisco IOS, FortiOS, containers, Kubernetes, cloud, operations, defence, models and the nine graphics eras) are the ones that carry exams.