ATmega1284 or ATmega328 to drive an Adafruit LCD

I am working on a project that is using a 2.8" Adafruit Capacitive Touch Breakout LCD. I started out with a breadboard ATmega328 to drive it, and all was going well. I was working on the graphic interface and making the program functional when suddenly I hit a brick wall. The sketch was exceeding the program space available on the 328. The Adafruit libraries are pretty heavy; they take up approximately 15 KB on their own without anything being displayed on the screen. Here is a list of the display libraries I'm using:

Adafruit_GFX.h
Adafruit_TFTLCD.h
gfxfont.h
pin_magic.h
Adafruit_FT6206.h

So, since I saw that I was running out of room, I started lightweighting my code by changing variables, but I wasn't able to reclaim enough space. So I ordered an ATmega 1284.

The 1284 showed up, and what I failed to consider before hand was code compatibility. The code wouldn't compile due to issues in the pin_magic.h library. So I altered the library to include the 1284 along side the Arduino Mega callouts in the library. I then hooked up the display to the 1284 using the same pins that the display would use if it were on an Arduino Mega. All I get is a white screen. I've referenced this forum: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=168911.0 but since I am not using the UTFT library, I'm not sure its applicable to my situation.

So my question is twofold. First, is it more feasible to attempt to lightweight my code and the libraries more so that it will fit on the ATmega328, or should I try to make the library compatible with the 1284. And if the 1284 is the best route, what exactly am I doing wrong. I assume I'm using the wrong pins on the 1284, but I'm not sure which pins I should be using.

Thanks for the help. If this post is in the wrong spot, let me know and I can move it.

Hi mjs2011,

I was interested to read your post - sounds like you are working along similar lines as me with the 1284p and the LCD hookup.

I've been using MightyCore's 1284p bootloader and it's been great - I'm just having some teething issues with white screens also & I think it's related to the Adafruit GFX library, although I don't have enough coding and AVRdude knowledge (yet) to figure it out.

There's been some recent replies on my post about it here if you want to take a look: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=386898

cheers, R.