Hi rhyde,
Dont give up. Its doable.
How far alow are you in your process ?
First to achive reliable boot you have to flash the firmware.
To do this there are two ways to do it. The one is with the UART cable but the second one with the sdcard.img is much easier.
Note: the sdcard.img is not a full image with GUI it is just used to easily patch the firmware.
To boot from the SD Card you have to have the SPI levers in the right way see here. Look for TF Card: https://www.waveshare.com/product/risc-v/boards-kits/visionfive2/visionfive2.htm Look for board boot options.
I will try to describe this:
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Write the image sdcard.img onto the sdcard. You can use balea etcher for this.
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Plug in the ethernet cable on the “middle” ethernet port. The one on the edge does not give you a DHCP adress.
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Monitor your router so see what new IP adress gets handet out.
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Turn on the VF2 now the Router should assign a new IP adress to your VF2.
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Open a Terminal on linux or Download Putty.exe on Windows.
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Connect to the risc v with the user root and the password starfive and the ip you read from your router.
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Now you should be connected to the VF2 and be logged in now you can flash the firmware and after that shutdown the sdcard.img
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Flash firmware. See here for a video:
Updating the VisionFive 2 Firmware (Read video description!) - YouTube
With forum post: VisionFive 2 Debian Image(December) Released - #43 by LivingLinux
Or here for text instructions (Can be translated with google): Starfive VisonFive2（RISC-V SBC） で遊ぶ – その2 ファームウェアの書き換え | ず＠沖縄 -
After the successful firmware flash, flash the debian69 image onto the SDcard and boot it up.
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you should have hdmi output.
I hope this helps. Please describe on what step do you have questions etc.
Thanks!
Please reach out for questions and help! Best
Dont give up 