MIXemu

MIXemu is a simulator of the MIX computer invented by Donald Knuth and described in his famous book "The Art of Computer Programming".

Two programs are included in the package: mixemu, a basic command line interface for the MIX simulator, and mixasm - a MIXAL assembler.

Installation

Installation instructions for the impatient:

./configure
make
make install

For more detailed installation instructions see the INSTALL file.

Basic usage instructions

The MIXemu package includes an example MIX program (examples/primes.mixal) that prints out the first five hundred prime numbers (the first MIX program described by Donald Knuth in TAoCP Volume 1). To assemble it, use the mixasm program:

mixasm primes.mixal

This produces the MIX program file primes.mp.

Start the simulator:

mixemu

You will see a ">" prompt. Initialize the printer device (with a device number of 18) to output data to a file named out:

set dev 18 out

Load the program:

load primes.mp

The simulator will display the start address of the program. Start it using the run command:

run

You should see a message telling you that the program finished successfully. At this point, a new file named out should be created in the current directory, containing the output of the printer device -- the first five hundred primes.

Quit the simulator:

quit