boutons_deux
08-19-2012, 05:46 PM
Victor Poor, Who Helped Create Early Intel Chips, Dies at 79
Victor Poor, a largely self-taught computer engineer who played an early role in the development of one of Intel's first commercial microprocessors, died on Friday in Palm Bay, Fla. He was 79.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his daughter Noreen Poor said.
While working in San Antonio as an engineer at the Computer Terminal Corporation - later renamed the Datapoint Corporation - in 1969, Mr. Poor approached Intel, then a tiny Silicon Valley chip maker, with a proposal to build a processor for a programmable terminal that Computer Terminal was planning to build.
An Intel engineer, Stanley Mazor, met with Mr. Poor and outlined three approaches to building the processor, including one in which all the circuitry would be on a single chip. At the time, Intel had already begun designing a simpler microprocessor, later known as the 4004, for a Japanese calculator company.
With financing from Computer Terminal, Intel began building a second microprocessor called the 8008. It would lead later to the 8088 family of microprocessors, which was adopted in 1981 by I.B.M. and which helped Intel dominate the microprocessor business.
The 8008 chip, however, was not finished in time to meet Computer Terminal's deadline, and the company ultimately built the processor for its 2200 terminal from multiple chips.
Several years later, Mr. Poor was a member of a small group of engineers who conceived of a computer network called Arcnet, which became a popular way of linking personal computers to share data.
Several colleagues said Mr. Poor had always been modest about his contributions. In an interview for the Computer History Museum in 2004, he credited the network design to his colleagues, adding, "I sat in the office throwing darts at it the whole time."
Mr. Poor retired in 1984 and pursued a passion for sailing. Looking for a way to communicate while he was at sea, he developed a wireless data communications system, initially called Aplink, for Amtor packet link, and later Winlink. The system was widely adopted by radio amateurs, the United States military, and state and local emergency preparedness teams. It was credited with being one of the few communications systems that worked in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Victor Dale Poor was born in Los Angeles on July 12, 1933, to Pinckney Peyton Poor and the former Leona Lucille Mallory.
As a teenager, he developed an interest in radio and built his own system by the time he was in high school. He became a radio amateur in 1951. Although he did not attend college, he took electronics-training classes both in the Navy and at Raytheon. A quick learner, he soon knew more than his instructors and began teaching classes himself.
Besides his daughter Noreen, he is survived by his wife, Florence Ann Poor; a son, Meredith; another daughter, Shirley Jean Schmidt; and a sister, Dixie Lee Hagerth.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=962271&f=24
Financed by Frost Bank that insisted Datapont locate in San Antonio. He, along with system architects Gary Asbell and Harry Pyle, delivered the first desktop PC, the Datapoint 2200 in 1970, right here in San Antonio. His team is really the creator of the CPU that launched Intel from a memory mfr to a microchip mfr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
They developed the first widely implemented LAN, ARCnet in 1978, on the back of which Novell built a corporation while Ethernet screwed around for a decade until finally switching to a a radial wiring scheme with central wiring hubs as ARCnet pioneered.
Victor Poor, a largely self-taught computer engineer who played an early role in the development of one of Intel's first commercial microprocessors, died on Friday in Palm Bay, Fla. He was 79.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his daughter Noreen Poor said.
While working in San Antonio as an engineer at the Computer Terminal Corporation - later renamed the Datapoint Corporation - in 1969, Mr. Poor approached Intel, then a tiny Silicon Valley chip maker, with a proposal to build a processor for a programmable terminal that Computer Terminal was planning to build.
An Intel engineer, Stanley Mazor, met with Mr. Poor and outlined three approaches to building the processor, including one in which all the circuitry would be on a single chip. At the time, Intel had already begun designing a simpler microprocessor, later known as the 4004, for a Japanese calculator company.
With financing from Computer Terminal, Intel began building a second microprocessor called the 8008. It would lead later to the 8088 family of microprocessors, which was adopted in 1981 by I.B.M. and which helped Intel dominate the microprocessor business.
The 8008 chip, however, was not finished in time to meet Computer Terminal's deadline, and the company ultimately built the processor for its 2200 terminal from multiple chips.
Several years later, Mr. Poor was a member of a small group of engineers who conceived of a computer network called Arcnet, which became a popular way of linking personal computers to share data.
Several colleagues said Mr. Poor had always been modest about his contributions. In an interview for the Computer History Museum in 2004, he credited the network design to his colleagues, adding, "I sat in the office throwing darts at it the whole time."
Mr. Poor retired in 1984 and pursued a passion for sailing. Looking for a way to communicate while he was at sea, he developed a wireless data communications system, initially called Aplink, for Amtor packet link, and later Winlink. The system was widely adopted by radio amateurs, the United States military, and state and local emergency preparedness teams. It was credited with being one of the few communications systems that worked in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Victor Dale Poor was born in Los Angeles on July 12, 1933, to Pinckney Peyton Poor and the former Leona Lucille Mallory.
As a teenager, he developed an interest in radio and built his own system by the time he was in high school. He became a radio amateur in 1951. Although he did not attend college, he took electronics-training classes both in the Navy and at Raytheon. A quick learner, he soon knew more than his instructors and began teaching classes himself.
Besides his daughter Noreen, he is survived by his wife, Florence Ann Poor; a son, Meredith; another daughter, Shirley Jean Schmidt; and a sister, Dixie Lee Hagerth.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=962271&f=24
Financed by Frost Bank that insisted Datapont locate in San Antonio. He, along with system architects Gary Asbell and Harry Pyle, delivered the first desktop PC, the Datapoint 2200 in 1970, right here in San Antonio. His team is really the creator of the CPU that launched Intel from a memory mfr to a microchip mfr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
They developed the first widely implemented LAN, ARCnet in 1978, on the back of which Novell built a corporation while Ethernet screwed around for a decade until finally switching to a a radial wiring scheme with central wiring hubs as ARCnet pioneered.