No USB connection with board

That's a CH340G serial adapter on that board in the pictures (instead of the 16u2 used on official boards, or the CP2102 or FT232 used by some clones). There's a big mess regarding drivers for CH340G and recent versions of MacOS (changes in the OS resulted in the previously working drivers not working anymore). Google CH340G and your MacOS version and dig around - there are working drivers around now.