So this motherboard has some kind of serial key thing attached to the rear IO. Do they still make motherboards with that serial key thing?
Wow.... haven't seen this used in a while... that's a parallel printer port by the looks of it. So unless you still have a printer that uses this you won't need it.
Friend of mine actually has this on her board, it's an H81 board tho. There are also still current boards that have this apparently. I think it's mostly internal now though, so you need to get it out of the case first.
It has the model number in huge letters right in the middle of the motherboard.
MS-6714
you can sometimes till get parallel ports around, depends what its for.
lol, I didn't even notice that. It is for a kitchen building software. It's old.
It's is stuck in a bootloop. I'm going to put new ram in it see what happens.
Might have to switch elcos aswell. The board was meant for Win98, 2000 and NT. So... 13 years are quite the lot for electrolytic caps.
Also: Manual
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/360239/Msi-845gem-Series.html#manual
The "serial key thing" has nothing to do with the motherboard. Unless it is a simple gender changer, it is likely a key used to limit access to a proprietary software package, which requires a separate license for each PC which is granted access. In other words, you can freely load the software onto all of your machines, but without the dongle, the software will nor execute. The more licenses you purchase, the more dongles you'll receive and, therefore, the more PCs you can use to access the software.
The motherboard is ....
Microstar MSI MS-6714 Intel Socket 478 DDR Onboard SND/VID/LAN Micro ATX OEM Motherboard
Soooo get yourself an Intel Socket 478 CPU and some DDR ram and away you go. : )