I have supplied a sample implementation of the vm for the assignment.
You can't see the C++ code of course, but you can run it. That means
that if something goes wrong with your implementation you will be
able to see whether it is your vm or the assemply language program
it was running that went wrong.

You'll also be able to get a feel for how something like this is
supposed to behave, that might be helpful too.

Put an assembly language program, or just part of one in a file in
your rabbit account. Let's say you called the file prog. Just type
the command vm218 prog and it will run.

If you have used different opcode names from me, that isn't a
problem, the program can adapt. If you have a file called vm_setup.txt
in the directory you are working in, you can easily tell the vm
how to translate. The opcodes I used are:

   STOP ADDR ADDN ADDM SUBR SUBN SUBM MULR MULN MULM DIVR DIVN DIVM
   JUMP JNEG JZER JPOS LOADR LOADN LOADM STORE READN OUTR OUTSR
   OUTSN CALL RET PUSH POP

If for example your opcode for adding a constant to a register is
ADDKR and your opcode for halting the program is HALT, just put
these two lines in vm_setup.com

translate ADDKR ADDN
translate HALT STOP

You can also translate directives (I used LABEL, DATA, and STRING)
and register names (I used R0 to R15). I set the sizes of the VM's
memory areas to be 8192 for code and data and unlimited for strings.
If you are using another size, maybe 1000, just add these lines

code 1000
data 1000

My instruction format has 5 bits for the opcode, 4 bits for the
register number and 23 bits for the operand. If your sizes are
different add (examples)

opcode 6
register 5
operand 21

You don't need to do anything about capital or little letters, my
version doesn't care, ADDR is the same as addr.

The main reason this may be helpful is that you can set options
to produce debugging output. Options are set when you run the VM
like this:
              vm218 -a prog
the available options are a, e, and s. You can turn any or all of
them on in various ways:
              vm218 -aes prog
              vm218 -e -s prog
              etc

-a shows what the assembler does. After reading each instruction
of the program or any directive it prints a line showing exactly
how it was converted into a 32 bit instruction, with opcode, register,
and operand separate and all combined into the final result.

-e traces the execution of the binary program. Before each instruction
is executed it prints the current values of whatever register and
memory location the instrction mentions, and shows the instruction
itself. After the instruction has been executed it also shows the
new values of the register and memory location. This can produce a
lot of output, so ...

-s slows it down, and is only meaningful when -e is also turned on.
With -s, the VM stops after showing you the current register and
memory values and the instruction, and waits until you press enter
before continuing. Instead of just pressing enter, you can also
type r to see the values of all of the registers, or some number
to see the content of that memory location and the corresponding
entry in the strings memory.

Remember that you are not expected to try to duplicate what I've
done, just implement the things you are required to implement and
make sure that what happens is understandable. "required" isn't
quite the right word, as there is an extra credit part and you
can add anything you like too.