Hi Brett/Chris
I was able to get my hands on an older TI Dev board (DRV8312EVM - Card: CC2803X) - long story short, the card installed as expected when I plugged it in and I was able to run hello world and see the registers in CCS.
Now pretty sure that the issue is card side - not sure that the card is dead per se but I think it's beyond me to get it up and running - after sinking a few days into the issue and getting precisely nowhere.
Anyway, I wanted to get your advice on getting the card swapped (considering I'm in Aus/3rd party vendor/etc) as fast as possible. The UNI labs are on break until after new years and element14 is slow so I am hoping I can swap directly through TI (completely understandable if that's not possible)? Happy to put up some cash for fedex /UPS if necessary - supposed to keep to a timetable for the project and a few weeks amounts to a fair chunk of project time....
Thanks for the support thus far!