Matrox: The Canadian Startup That Powered NASA's Viking Displays
Matrox: Graphics for Professionals
Founded in 1976 by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić, Matrox started with a $198 video RAM board and grew into a graphics powerhouse. Their early S-100 bus cards offered four times the resolution of rivals, and by 1978 their hardware was used in NASA's Viking mission ground control. The company later won a $72 million US Army contract and released the first 3D add-in card for PCs, the SM-640, though it failed due to a lack of software.
The ALT-256**2 is a fully tested, assembled, and burned-in interface card which provides capability for a complete graphic system at a fraction of the cost of any other commercial graphic system.