http://payb.tc/derp

Here we go again.

Thanks for the quick and detailed explanation! That cleared things up for me.

Try running the client with the "-rescan" parameter.

True, but I don't think that difference is too significant. 

I'm doing that already while using my computer for non resource intensive tasks and it yields about 8.5 Mhash/s. Not enough to cover the electricity cost, but at least my CPU has something to do now when I'm browsing the internet. 

After doing some research about how Bitcoin works, I found something which I just can't understand. Every transaction since the beginning of Bitcoin is stored in the block chain. Today everyone downloads it since its size is not a big issue. But soon when more and more people start using Bitcoin and thus more and more transactions happen, the size will grow and downloading it on every new client can become a tedious task.

I can't understand why someone would even want to have the block chain on his hard drive. Basically there are 2 things you can do in the system I know of:
- You can mine for the new block, but you just need the newest block in order to start your mining.
- You can start a transaction. Again you don't need to have the block chain. You just need your wallet.dat and the recipient's address. If you want to check your balance, you can just use a service like blockexplorer.com.

So why would anyone ever have the need to possess the whole block chain. Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks for the quick reply! Seems like I shouldn't keep my hopes up turning my system into a small mining rig.

Hello everyone,

According to this article, the Ufasoft miner is supporting GPU-Mining through the CAL-API. I've got a HD 3850 and since it doesn't support OpenCL, I thought this would be an option to get my first BTC. But for some reason the miner won't find my GPU. No matter if i deactivate the use of a GPU with the "-g no" parameter, I always get the same amount of Mhash/s. Installing the ATI Stream SDK 1.4 didn't change anything as well.

Does anyone have the same problem or knows how to fix this?

This option has been removed from the client-GUI. You can still activate it though by running the client with the parameter "-gen".

But since it uses your CPU instead of your GPU and you're mining on your own, it is pretty much a waste of electricity nowadays. I suggest you take a look at the various Mining-Software and the concept of pools.

http://payb.tc/derp