I was on a forum that used V-Bulletin and they (V-Bulletin) have a way you can make a board a category, does SMF have a way of doing that?
I read that this could be done, making the boards sub-boards of one that would be the "category" and making the parent board read only and have no posts in it.
That was one reason I liked the idea of SMF. I plan on doing this for member content on my forum.
That doesn't really make the board a category though. And I don't see any way of doing it. You'd still have to create a category, then a closed parent board, then it's subboards. This mod comes closest but it's out-of-date and most likely won't work on your version. Emulation may work but I'd be surprised:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1834
that just makes each category into its own page.... emanuele's category-tabs mod does something similar...
in short -- no... what you are asking for is not a part of SMF's core design concept and would take some fairly hefty modification to allow a category within a board.