Noob starter guide

Hello, I’ll admit I’m a bit of a noob, but I seem to not be able to do anything with my new visionfive 2.
I find hard to understand what to do, since there are many places where they tell you to try stuff, but nothing seems to work for me.
I tried flashing the image (starfive-jh7110-202302-SD-minimal-desktop.img) on my board, but nothing happens. I see people getting errors, but I don’t even understand where they’re getting them from.
I’m really confused, can anybody help? Maybe with a short noobproof starting guide.
Thanks to anyone who will try to help me.

Hi. I received my board today. To make it work I had to update the firmware. After I did those steps (with SDK 2.10 which is the latest) I was able to run Arch Linux from here (Arch is the distro I use at home so I feel more comfortable there).

I think the same applies to the latest Debian release, which needs updating the firmware.

Which version of the VF2 do you have, 1.2A or 1.3B?
It’s written in white on the motherboard.

Version 1.2A probably needs a firmware upgrade to get version 69 running.
In case you have 1.2A, you can try to start with Debian version 55.
Here is a post with instructions to upgrade the firmware and get Debian version 69 running: A definitive guide to getting a VisionFive2 board running on a Debian (69) version - #11 by Manux

With version 1.3B of the VF2, I assume Debian version 69 will work.

What do you mean exactly with “I tried flashing the image (starfive-jh7110-202302-SD-minimal-desktop.img) on my board”? I assume you wrote it to a micro SD card?

Also note that 4K monitors can give issues. Better test with a 1080p monitor.

I have 1.2A, I tried with the version 55, but it still didn’t work. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Yes, with flashing I mean I used balenaetcher as indicated and then put the micros in the board.

Since you are using the latest release, it actually has the latest SPL and U-boot+OpenSBI builtin. And now you can boot using them directly from the SD card by changing your boot switches to the SDIO3.0 position. And later on you can update the onboard QSPI Flash with the latest SPL and U-boot+OpenSBI.

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I didn’t see those switches, but now that i notice them I really think this could solve my problems. Thanks a lot.

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Update
I put the switches in the right position and all my problems were gone. I probably should have done more research, but I still believe it wasn’t that easy to find informations about those switches. I think the quick start guide should include that part in the Getting started section.

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That change was only in the latest image. Up until now it was always keep the switches in the default position and upgrade/boot from the onboard QSPI FLASH.
I’m sure the document will catch up before the next image is released.