Problem with external question

[Jimmkos]

Hello all,
a friend of mine is running a smf forum.
Im trying to to connect with his database from my own server (Windows) with asp scripting but Im always getting the following error

[MySQL][ODBC 5.3(w) Driver]Unknown character set: 'utf8mb4'

The connection string Im using is the following

Driver={MySQL ODBC 5.3 UNICODE Driver}; Server=<IP>; uid=<Username>; pwd=<Password>; database=<database>; option=3; port=3306;

Can anyone tell me whats wrong?

Thank you for your time!

[Jimmkos]

The title should be "Problem with external server"

My bad, Im sorry.

[Kindred]

I don't believe that SMF supports that sort of connection....

Also, running two sites, with different connections on the same database just won't work... ever

[Jimmkos]

Can you show me a connection sample smf is using?

[Kindred]

well, it's not actually an SMF issue... it's an issue with your server(s) and the versions they are using

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21911733/error-1115-42000-unknown-character-set-utf8mb4

[Jimmkos]

When saying "versions", you mean smf ones?

[GigaWatt]

No, he means the MySQL version on the server .

A quote from the link Kindred shared.

Your version does not support that character set, I believe it was 5.5.3 that introduced it. You should upgrade your mysql to the version you used to export this file.

[Jimmkos]

Thank you all