Hey bob it works like this:
1. Download RHminer package, find the RHminer.exe extract it somewhere... this is all you need.
2. Click start button then either enter cmd.exe on white bar or find command prompt black icon with c:\ in it.
3. type cd\somefolder where rhminer.exe was extracted.
4. try run it rhminer.exe this will show command line options.
Eventually you will have to put the following line in a text file somewhere:
"C:\Tools\PascalCoin\version 4.01\PolyMiner\CPU\rhminer.exe" -v 2 -r 20 -s
http://127.0.0.1:4009 -cpu 0 -cputhreads 2 -extrapayload Bob
^ This uses the cpu option of rhminer.
GPU will look like:
"C:\Tools\PascalCoin\version 4.01\PolyMiner\CPU\rhminer.exe" -v 2 -r 20 -s
http://127.0.0.1:4009 -gpu 0 -gputhreads 32 -extrapayload Bob
Save this text file as run.txt then rename it to run.bat
You must make sure it's not run.txt.bat otherwise it won't work.
Find tools->folder options in windows explorer and go to view then uncheck hide extensions for known file types.
Also checkmark "show hidden folder and folders" this may help you later to find the app dir and data folders of pascalcoin easier if you want to copy your wallet to somewhere safe or so or mess with blockchain.
Once down you can click run.bat next time to start the miner, this is handy.
This bat file can also be added to task schedular to run it from a certain time, not going to explain how to do that now but it's a nice option... but probably not necessary if you just want to run it straight away.
Try the steps above and let us know at which step you had problems.
In short what you just did above was:
1. Download and extract a release/binary distribution... source code is included too... this is a bit messy of polyminer1... I can agree with you there. the github/zip contains different releases for gpu... these are cuda architecture... if you want to run this miner on your nvidia graphics card then you must match the cuda architecture yourself manually and use the correct rhminer... rhminer will not work on amd/ati graphics cards I think.
2. Open a ms-dos command prompt and run an exe that way to test it out and via command line options.
3. Create a batchfile and run the batchfile.
Batch files work with command line options which look something like:
-s sometext
-s is to indicate it's a command line option/switch
sometext is the input for the option.
Now you have some terms to google and learn more about this.
I agree with you a little bit, that for younger people you should not have to know about old ms-dos commands... this was way before your time
Creating a nice GUI app/front-end for rhminer would not be too difficult... somebody could do it... including me...
Probably would take about 1 hour or so to create a nice gui front end...
But me tired and have to go to sleep.
I'll make you guys a deal... for 10 pascal coins I will make a nice gui front end for RHminer !
=D