Mr. T

Mr. T

We know the A-Team is hiding out somewhere in the Los Angeles underground, but Mr. T has taken it to an extreme by shrinking himself and disappearing into an integrated circuit. Like other members of the famous crack commando unit, Mr. T was sent to a prison by a military court for a crime he didn't commit. Shortly thereafter, the A-Team soldiers of fortune escaped a maximum security stockade and are still wanted by the government.

The A-Team was a popular television show that ran in the 1980s, featuring a team of four do-good fugitives who helped people when the real law was unable. A total of 94 episodes ran for five seasons, when the show underwent a major makeover for the worse and was eventually cancelled. Mr. T, who is seen wearing a medallion with the letters "T1" in the image above, played the character Sergeant Elliot "Bad Attitude" Baracas in the A-Team series. He was born Laurence Tureaud in 1952, the second youngest of 12 children, on the south side of Chicago and grew up in the housing projects. Tureaud changed his name to Tero in 1970 and later to Mr. T in order to force people into calling him "Mister". Mr. T's hairstyle was modeled after a Mandinka warrior that he saw in National Geographic magazine, and his first major production was "Rocky III", in which he played a boxer with actor Sylvester Stallone.

This silicon artwork appears on a Dallas Semiconductor single-chip T1 transceiver integrated circuit that also features the Good Die Fuse and Made in Texas doodles. The chip contains all the necessary functions for connection to T1 lines (thus the T1 medallion on Mr. T's neck) for both long and short haul line interfaces.

The chip containing this artwork was loaned to us by Chipworks, a company that is an international provider of reverse engineering services, analyzing the circuitry and physical composition of semiconductor chips and electronics systems for competitive study, intellectual property support, and reliability assurance.


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