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MIX is a mythical computer, so it is no use ordering it from your favorite hardware provider. mdk provides three software simulators of the computer, though. They are
mixvm, a command line oriented simulator,
gmixvm, a GTK based graphical interface to mixvm, and
mixguile, a Guile shell with a built-in MIX simulator.
All three simulators accept the same set of user commands, but offer a
different user interface, as noted above. In this section we shall
describe some of these commands, and show you how to use them from
mixvm's command line. You can use them as well at gmixvm's
command prompt (see gmixvm), or using the built-in Scheme primitives
of mixguile (see Using mixguile).
Using the MIX simulators, you can run your MIXAL programs, after
compiling them with mixasm into binary .mix
files. mixvm can be used either in interactive or
non-interactive mode. In the second case, mixvm will load
your program into memory, execute it (producing any output due to
MIXAL OUT instructions present in the program), and exit when
it encounters a HLT instruction. In interactive mode, you will
enter a shell prompt which allows you issuing commands to the running
virtual machine. This commands will permit you to load, run and debug
programs, as well as to inspect the MIX computer state (register
contents, memory cells contents and so on).