The T32 Book

A small, welcoming machine for learning assembly one clear step at a time.

Welcome. This book is a gentle introduction to T32, a tiny assembly language and virtual machine with exactly 32 instructions.

If assembly feels unfamiliar, that is completely fine. T32 is a nice place to start because the machine is small enough to hold in your head, but still rich enough to do real work. You get a single register, a stack, a data pointer, and a 64 KiB memory tape. That is not much, and that is the point.

This book is written in the same spirit as a good tutorial language book:

• we start with intuition before details
• we prefer small examples over dense theory
• we explain what each instruction is for
• we keep the reference close at hand when you are ready for it

By the end, you should feel comfortable reading T32 programs, writing your own, and understanding how a restricted instruction set can still be expressive.

Who this is for

This book is for:

• people who are curious about assembly programming
• people who like tiny machines and elegant constraints
• people who want to learn by building and reading examples

You do not need prior assembly experience. A little patience and curiosity are enough.

What T32 gives you

T32 combines three useful ideas:

• a single 8-bit register called A
• a stack for temporary storage and subroutine calls
• a memory tape addressed through a 16-bit data pointer DP

That combination makes T32 feel smaller than a typical CPU, but more expressive than an accumulator-only toy machine.

How to read this book

If you are new to T32, read from the beginning. If you already know the basics, skip ahead to the instruction reference or the examples.