Reading real cartridges (Update - IT LIVES! - video)

[abrugsch]

About halfway through the soldering

Wowsers that's a lot of soldering! Are you having to do them all by hand?

I don't "HAVE" to. we have a reflow oven at the space but I need the practice on SMD stuff as I haven't done a lot before. I don't mind practicing on my own stuff... lol.
It probably looks a bit abortionist right now as I haven't cleaned up the flux residue yet and the red LED's (D25-D27) I got hacked off with having to re-do them, so didn't clean the pads off to get them nice and flat. even so it took waaaaay longer than I'd have expected, mainly because of the amount of time sorting out the previous attempt on the IC's

still, 19 resistors, 2 capacitors, and the connectors are all that's left (and maybe a pin mod to bring it in line with my V0.2 revision.) then test the connections with the meter making sure there's no Vcc going anywhere it shouldn't, or GND bridging where it shouldn't be on the IC's, then connect it to a Pi and run some test patterns to see if I've killed the IC's

I should manage all that next tuesday night

[abrugsch]

I should manage all that next tuesday night

whoops that's the 14th. not going to the hackerspace then or my wife would kill me wednesday or thursday it is...

[Helder]

HOWEVER the Pi can drive the PiTFT directly but it comes with a downside of using nearly every single GPIO pin available.

Do you have a link to this information of how to drive the PiTFT screen without SPI?

[moosepr]

Do you have a link to this information of how to drive the PiTFT screen without SPI?

I found this one a while back

http://blog.reasonablycorrect.com/raw-dpi-raspberry-pi/

it chomps up a good chunk of the gpio, but you get faster throughput

[Helder]

Do you have a link to this information of how to drive the PiTFT screen without SPI?

I found this one a while back

http://blog.reasonablycorrect.com/raw-dpi-raspberry-pi/

it chomps up a good chunk of the gpio, but you get faster throughput

I actually know of that but I was under the impression that the PiTFT had some specific instructions/guide on how to use them. The post I quoted above made it seem like there was some other method for SPI screens, and the hardest thing with DPI is that you feed it the correct information for the screen which is not always so easy to do if the datasheets are missing the info to properly configure it.

[moosepr]

I actually know of that but I was under the impression that the PiTFT had some specific instructions/guide on how to use them. The post I quoted above made it seem like there was some other method for SPI screens, and the hardest thing with DPI is that you feed it the correct information for the screen which is not always so easy to do if the datasheets are missing the info to properly configure it.

Ah right, my mistake, I assumed you were talking generic TFT screens. Looking at the schematic for the PiTFT board is not possible, although the screen itself is capable.

https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/a ... 1431968295

[abrugsch]

@helder I've been piecing together fragments from all over the place. There's no one link which has it but the most promising one is the gamegirl on hackaday.io

[Helder]

@helder I've been piecing together fragments from all over the place. There's no one link which has it but the most promising one is the gamegirl on hackaday.io

Thanks! I was able to talk to some people on discord that have been working with this project and the developers and it seems almost any screen with the ili9340/9341 controller and no need to even have an LED driver chip! I'm ordering some screens right now from BuyDisplay.com for some testing and will develop some simple board for this project which I will gladly share with everyone here.

Project and schematics:
https://github.com/davidperrenoud/Gamegirl

Screen Code:
https://github.com/lakkatv/gamegirl-screen


Screens that will work with this mod and the pinout:
http://www.buydisplay.com/default/color ... serial-spi

http://www.buydisplay.com/default/seria ... uch-screen

http://www.buydisplay.com/default/seria ... en-ili9488 < not sure this will work because of the driver chip

[abrugsch]

I'm ordering some screens right now from BuyDisplay.com for some testing and will develop some simple board for this project which I will gladly share with everyone here.

Cool. I'm planning on doing the same. my bits have arrived over the last week and will hopefully get it together tonight to start experimenting (50 pin fpc and breakout board) so between us we should come up with something

[abrugsch]

Screen Code:
https://github.com/lakkatv/gamegirl-screen

ooh. that right there is the missing piece of the puzzle! I was going to pick apart the lakka gamegirl distribution to find how the ILI display was set up, but you've hit the nail on the head!