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.


© 1995-2022 by Michael W. Davidson and The Florida State University. All Rights Reserved. No images, graphics, software, scripts, or applets may be reproduced or used in any manner without permission from the copyright holders. Use of this website means you agree to all of the Legal Terms and Conditions set forth by the owners.
This website is maintained by our
Graphics & Web Programming Team
in collaboration with Optical Microscopy at the
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.
Last modification: Friday, Dec 31, 2004 at 04:01 PM
Access Count Since January 9, 1999: 82010