Made some progress. I've got a Panucatt re-arm smoothie board and did some testing on it while waiting for my new board with TMC 2660 drivers to come in.
Got the latest config file from Smoothieware.org and while going thu the config.txt settings I noticed a setting to enable the uart as a second serial connection.
enabled that and set the baud to match on both.
The TFT connects thru the Aux1 header on the ramps1.4 sheild.
Seems to work so far, all of the TFT screen functions work so far.
Thought I'd pass along what I learned from trying to hack this display onto a board other than the Makerbase Sbase board.
Now that I've got that done its time to start connecting it to my printer.