In need of desperate help with Ender 3 Neo with GD32F103

I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve tried to flash my Ender 3 Neo GD32F103 MCU. Creality, in their infinite wisdom, decided it was ok to leave out the GD32F103 from their guided setup on the sonic pad.

Troubleshooting done so far

Running ubuntu via UTM on my MacBook pro
downloaded klipper
run make menuconfig with different combinations of the below
with/without low level config
with/without disable swd
USB/USART1
Baud 112500/250000
generated firmware via make menuconfig and via sonic pad

Via mainsail
updated printer.cfg [mcu] with
/dev/serial/by-id/usb_serial_1
/dev/serial/by-id/usb-1a86_USB_Serial-if00-port0
different baud rates
different printer configs

factory reset sonic pad

refreshed mcu with original firmware - original display starts working fine and printer is fully functional

used these posts for guidance without success:
https://www.reddit.com/r/klippers/comments/11oh90s/success_story_ender_3_neo/
https://www.reddit.com/r/klippers/comments/wefy78/klipper_on_original_ender3_with_422_board/
https://www.reddit.com/r/klippers/comments/11ogr06/ender_3_neo_config_file/

latest klippy log error:

[ERROR] 2026-06-13 02:43:18,326 [root] [klippy:_connect:208] MCU error during connect
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/klipper/klippy/mcu.py", line 852, in _mcu_identify
    self._serial.connect_uart(self._serialport, self._baud, rts)
  File "/usr/share/klipper/klippy/serialhdl.py", line 182, in connect_uart
    self._error("Unable to connect")
  File "/usr/share/klipper/klippy/serialhdl.py", line 61, in _error
    raise error(self.warn_prefix + (msg % params))
serialhdl.error: mcu 'mcu': Unable to connect

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/klipper/klippy/klippy.py", line 160, in _connect
    self.send_event("klippy:mcu_identify")
  File "/usr/share/klipper/klippy/klippy.py", line 371, in send_event
    return [cb(*params) for cb in self.event_handlers.get(event, [])]
  File "/usr/share/klipper/klippy/klippy.py", line 371, in <listcomp>
    return [cb(*params) for cb in self.event_handlers.get(event, [])]
  File "/usr/share/klipper/klippy/mcu.py", line 857, in _mcu_identify
    raise error(str(e))
mcu.error: mcu 'mcu': Unable to connect