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  • Oct 11, 2026, 6:48 PM

    This board's running CFM1 at 40MHz, and repainting the display text is significantly faster than most of the demos running on the 150 MHz RP2xxx board that came with it. (I read over the code people are using, and it misses a lot of optimization opportunities.)

    Theoretical minimum time required to repaint the full display: 81 ms.

    My mostly-unoptimized prototype routine (some of which is being displayed on the screen there) is taking: 85 ms.

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  • Oct 12, 2026, 3:24 AM

    Alright, I figured out some of the reasons why my display repaints are faster than others'. (Not everyone's -- there are some very fast demos on YouTube, source unavailable.)

    A meme appears to have spread that the ILI9488 doesn't support 16-bit color mode in 4-wire SPI mode, only 24-bit. So these applications are sending 50% more bits than I am.

    The meme seems to stem from an error in a diagram in the datasheet, but the datasheet _text_ says it's supported, and it's what I've always used.

    I wonder if I should send some PRs to people.

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  • Oct 12, 2026, 4:13 PM

    Awwww yeeeeah smooth scrolling

    (The ILI9xxx parts can be programmed to display with an offset in vram, poke that carefully from a loop and you get this! This was a single line of code change because Forth.)

    I type "words" at the forth prompt on the PicoCalc and a list of all definitions scrolls smoothly down the display
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  • Oct 11, 2026, 8:42 PM

    @cliffle i have spent my entire weekend contemplating the idea of getting a picocalc. thank you for posting abt yours <3

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  • Oct 11, 2026, 9:18 PM

    @scrabsha I will warn you, the keyboard was created as a torture device.

    But otherwise it's a fun piece of kit.

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  • Oct 12, 2026, 6:07 AM

    @cliffle goes to show again how important accurate docs are. A whole class of people now think this chip is worse than it is.

    How many chip sales have they squandered? We'll never know, but it's possible it's a lot

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  • Oct 12, 2026, 3:05 PM

    @diondokter Maybe -- this chip is quite common in low-cost TFT panels, and I think a lot of people see "24 bit color" as a feature. I'm only forcing 16 bit color because I'm a giant performance nerd, and because of its maximum 20 MHz SPI rate.

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