It should work, but the preferred method I think is now via an integrated overlay in order get support for KMS/DRM. You'd better ask in the RP forums with the exact display model and make.

Ah, fair enough, I’ll just keep trying to troubleshoot tonight.

Also, it seems I was mistaken about my initial problem getting fixed- for some reason the touchpad keyboard will work a good percentage of the time (more often than not) both in and out of the terminal, though for some reason it’ll stop working every so often when I switch to terminal. Still wondering if it might not have to do with the latest build for my screen driver (because at least now it works more often than not), though I’m not sure why this might be a factor. Sorry, I just don’t know enough about Pi’s/RetroPie/Linux to know how/where to start troubleshooting. Thanks!

I too found this arcade 3D print and had huge problems getting the diplay to work. Thanks to this old post I got it working after all. For all of you who also stumble over this post the code that has to be executed has changed a bit: "sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev python-smbus python-pip python-pil python-numpy git" otherwise it aborts with an error.
Thanks watson49 for posting your solution. I wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise!

There is another driver project for ILI9341 based SPI displays https://github.com/juj/fbcp-ili9341 that you can try, if you're still working on the project. That one is a full standalone solution that does not utilize modprobe or the kernel SPI driver. Installation instructions are at https://github.com/juj/fbcp-ili9341#building-and-running

May I request a more in-depth assistance in order to install this driver correctly since the installation guide on the linked GitHub page is super complex for a beginner builder like myself.
:((( I would love to get this up and running for my handheld Retropie Console project

@obsidianspider I got distracted with other projects, should really get back on it

@obsidianspider I know yeah! YouTube hits shot from like 300 on Friday, to 5.6k on the last check! Been on a few sites including hackaday! :)

Hi !!
Super useful.....thanks.
But ili9341 is now included in RASPBIAN STRETCH kernel, so I took off from the fbcp installation and did work.

But I noticed that the screen refresh rate is too slow.
In this new scenario, where do I do the tweaks you suggest?

It was a network problem. I got it to run the commands, but on reboot it doesn't display to the screen.