Smoke N' Glasses (The Groucho Mask)

Smoke N' Glasses (The Groucho Mask)

We found this unusual character smoking a cigar on the Weitek P-9000 graphics accelerator chip used to power many video cards in the early 1990s. This particular chip was cut from a dysfunctional Diamond Viper VLB video card with 8 megabytes of random access memory (RAM). The card was labeled "Fastest video on planet Earth" by Dell in a 1993 marketing campaign aimed at selling high-end 486 local bus computers (not so fast now, though). We don't understand the significance of this guy with a bushy mustache and eyebrows, but it appears that he is wearing polarizing sunglasses (that may be 3D glasses to enhance video) and the whole thing strongly resembles a Groucho mask.


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