How to make a CS server?

[KlumpDud]

Is anyone familiar with this?

I will be starting college in September and will have a fast connection in my dorm. I'm planning on seting up a dedicated CS server.

What exactly do I need? Hardware? OS? Setup? Etc?

Thanks!

[Blakhart]

An old P2 (or K6) should do nicely. Strip it of everything like sound and whatnot. Turn off all the comms and usb and everything else that you will not use on it. Set the nic in slot 3, and load 98/ME (Linux may do too. I do not know.) and the game server program. Set up the isp service and there ya go.
May want to set up isp before you load the game/server program. A 6 gig drive will do well. Even a 2 gig should suffice.
When I set up my first game server, it was a p2 266 with 98 megs ram, running 98. On a t1 it would do 25 players with no problems. There was no diff between the 266 and the 850 tbird that served for a while. The tbird had 786 megs ram.

[DrZaius]

Yep, you can use a P2/3 or K6-2 around 500MHz, just make sure you have at least 256MB of RAM. Disable everything that's not needed (USB, sound, etc.) and use Win2000 or Linux, do not use Win9x/ME. Counter-Server has pretty much all the info you need, check out their forums as well.

http://server.counter-strike.net/

[KlumpDud]

What about Windows 2000? I heard it works well because it has better security and memory management...

Also, do you need a good video card? Or would something like my old voodoo3 work?

And do you need a case with great cooling, or will any old case do?

[Orcmonkey]

Video card is a NON ISSUE... As long as you aren't going to play on the same box... It is all run from a CLI.

[glc]

Any old case will do, you could even pick up an old Gateway or Dell Pentium II at a yard sale for this kind of use and strip the nonessentials out of it, just load it up with ram and a good nic.

[Blakhart]

I think 2k may be a bit slower as a server but I do not know. Need a copy so I can speriment and see if the HAL makes for a slower rig, everything else being equal. Just an idea I had.

[RenegadeKing]

I wouldn't use win9x. You won't be able to leave it on 24/7 without rebooting it if you do get it. Get either NT4 or 2k, or linux. I'm trying to set up a game server now, and I put linux on it. The thing needs more ram though. It only has 32 megs.

[Blakhart]

Ummm, my ME install on my game server (running right now) has been on for weeks at a time. I feel that this is due the fact no one has access to it. It only runs the game server program.
If you had someone starting up apps and then dropping them and doing something else, I could see the need for a reboot.
Just to clear the mem of tsr and all that lot.
Would like to get linux as the os but I have no clue as to how to make it do what I want. Yet......
Perhaps it's stability is due the fact it is using a BX chipset and a SCSI drive?
VIVA LA BX!!