AUTUMN 2026 // WEEK 08
The Last Instruction
A recovered mainframe trace has lost its instruction names. Recover the machine’s output from its calibration traces and program.
Closes
Bench trace // four erased mnemonics
ENCOM / ARCHIVED BENCH TRACE User: FLYNN Review queue: Master Control Program. Stacks are written bottom -> top. PUSH n appends decimal n. The four other instructions are DUP, ADD, XOR and OUT, each assigned once to K/M/R/T. DUP copies the top. ADD and XOR pop two values and push their sum or bitwise XOR. OUT pops one value as an ASCII character. Calibration (each starts independently): [6] K -> [6,6] output: none [6,3] M -> [9] output: none [6,3] R -> [5] output: none [65] T -> [] output: A PROGRAM (start with an empty stack): PUSH 41 K M PUSH 1 M T PUSH 85 PUSH 5 R T PUSH 32 K M PUSH 1 M T PUSH 80 PUSH 2 M T PUSH 64 PUSH 11 R T