Thank you for your answer. bitcoin-qt is version 0.5.1-beta. And I just checked it again after letting it run for a while, and happily it has 5 connections now.
And last block was 1050 days ago! So it'll be a while. Oh my lord, did I see that right? 20 GB size to see the latest BTC transactions? I only have 0.003 BTC coming, which is about $0.01. For 20 GB size I wonder if it's even worth it. Maybe I should wait until I get a better computer? This is an old 2010 one. What do you think?
UPDATE: Ok, just found the latest bitcoin-qt version, downloaded, running fine. It does notify me that it's out of sync, and connected faster to the servers, but surely will take a long time. Thanks for help. I feel stupid for not figuring it out myself, but meh, it's been years since I mined.
No worries, if you have the drive space and bandwidth I say let it run and sync up. Then you'll have your $1 and go from there! Welcome back..keep on mining!
Thank you 727m! My old laptop is only able to mine about 3000 kbps and nowhere near other's Gbps. I started this as a pilot long ago, to show a potential investor that it was real, and hoped for a 20 computer network but never got funded. Oh well. Have to proceed from here. So here's what I propose. I have researched into other areas since then, and have power production inventions on the tech side, and neocortical self-programming upgrades on the biological side. The first would significantly reduce miners' electric cost for mining, and the second shows people how to hard-"wire" new information directly into long term brain storage. I have autism, suffered a brain injury, and combined my investigations and rewiring (neurological) with understanding others' "savant" skills, to create a new method of remembering and learning. Increased memory and creativity result.
There are additional books and projects on which I'm working as I have time, but I am horribly cash-shy. No funds to invest in mining equipment, so I would like to find some of you with capital, and discuss options to help improve your lives or those of your choosing, so that I can earn BTC to launch some of the international projects (tech and education) which I have in mind, so that I can finally get out of poverty and improve the planetary standard of living.
Anyway, if you are open to discuss further, and/or can gather the veterans here who may remember me starting to at least have familiarity, then I would much appreciate it.
(And, the bitcoin program is caught up up to 3 years and 4 weeks ago, which means it's regrowing everything from the beginning. Hope my transactions appear.)
Have a great Monday!