Finally resolved.
As the database is over 6 years old, it collected a lot of optional plugin installs and un-installs over the years which unfortunately left quite a number of unused tables in the database. The Options table too was seriously bloated - to the tune of 122MB!
So:
1. I manually went in and removed the no longer needed tables (after backing up the database of course)
2. I manually edited the db version number in the options table (as given above, thanks!) to 12329 to force going beyond the forced upgrade page
3. I went to the admin panel, downloaded, installed and activated the "Clean Options" plugin.
4. I got the plugin to remove all the hash rss entries (over 8 thousand of them!)
5. I got the plugin to evaluate all the remaining entries in the table to determine the most likely unneeded entries and double checked them all. Selected the ones I know to be unneeded and deleted them.
6. The above operation reduced the database size from 310MB down to 58MB!! Serious weight loss ;)
7. I re-edited the options value to put in the old database version of 11548
8. Went to the Admin panel again /wp-admin
9. Clicked the "upgrade database" button, and then within seconds the upgrade was reported successful and I have my blog back!
Moral of the story? Maybe plug-in developers should clean up their database entries on deactivation of their plugins. And wish the WordPress team would consider adding this clean-up operation in a future version.
Best regards and thanks for continuing to develop WordPress
Mahmood Al-Yousif
http://mahmood.tv