Interfacing (DSI, CSI, I2C, etc.) • Using generic ili9488 SPI screen with RPi 3a+

Hi guys, this is my first forum post, so Im not really sure how to format this.

Im trying to get a generic 3.2" SPI TFT display using an ILI9488 controller working on a Raspberry pi 3a+ on legacy version 32bit (bookworm latest) but I just can't get it to work. The issue I am having is that no DRM device appears for the screen I have, dmesg | grep -i dbi shows nothing, the Display is completely blank despite the backlight being on and /dev/dri/card0 and renderD128 are inconsistent (missing sometimes preventing the OS from booting to the graphical desktop, despite it trying to boot to Graphical.target)

Is there any way to connect this? I can change OS and stuff. its 320x240 pixels. I have the link I bought it from here : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Display-ILI948 ... ca_id_hp_d

It is connected to the pis SPI0 with:
MOSI (SP0 MOSI)
MISO (SP0 MISO)
SCLK (SP0 SCLK)
CE0 (SP0 CE0)
DC (GPIO24)
RESET(GPIO25)

I have tried the following
Enabled SPI

Removed SPIDev

Added the DTOverlay
- dtoverlay=mipi-dbi-spi,spi0-0,dc-gpios=24,reset-gpios=25,width=320,height=480

Confirmed that mipi-dbi-spi exists

Verified SPI devices
- spidev 0.0 and 0.1

Thanks

Statistics: Posted by willster — Thu Feb 19, 2026 8:17 pm — Replies 1 — Views 37

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