So I followed the instructions in the mining forums to start mining namecoins solo, but I'm stuck and have some questions.
1. How can I get a namecoin address?
2. Am I doing this correctly? I launched namecoind.exe by typing "start namecoind.exe" and all i get is a blank screen with a blinking cursor.
3. How would I know I found a block and where does it go (since I don't have a namecoin address).
Thanks in advance guys!
2. You are doing it correctly (you don't need the "start" though).
Namecoin is not available in client form, just a daemon, and that it is running. If you have run it, it created a wallet and an address for you. You need to leave it running so it can get the entire blockchain up to the current block number.
1. You need to open a second command prompt window to issue RPC commands to the running daemon. A typical command would be "namecoind.exe help" or "namecoind.exe getblocknumber". Another command might be "namecoind.exe getaddressesbyaccount 0".
3. If you are using a solo miner to connect to your local namecoind, it's status should change to 1 accepted, 0 rejected, after hours or weeks of mining. You can also issue the command "namecoind.exe getbalance" and see if it is 50.0000000 instead of 0.00000000. If you are pool mining, the pool balance should slowly increase as they find blocks for which you have contributed.