I had Claude Opus disassemble the CDC 6600 dead start panel. The hard part was finding a better image of the switches so the vision could read the bits.¹
The content isn't very interesting, and Claude's comments aren't very detailed. Not bad for 2 minutes of work about a 62 year old computer though. Look out Ken Shirriff, AI is coming for you.²
Addr Octal Instruction Meaning
0001 7512 DCN 12 Disconnect channel 12 (put it in a known idle state)
0002 7712 FNC 12, 4000? Send function code to channel 12's device
0003 4000? └ function code (last bit unclear: 4000 or 4001)
0004 7712 FNC 12, 0001 Send another function code
0005 0001 └ function code
0006 7712 FNC 12, 1500? Send a third function code
0007 1500? └ function code (least certain row)
0010 2000 LDC 0160? Load A with a word count
0011 0160? └ the count
0012 7412 ACN 12 Activate channel 12
0013 7112 IAM 12, 0015 Read A words from channel 12 into memory starting at 0015
0014 0015 └ destination address
1. https://dyninst.github.io/scalable_tools_workshop/petascale2...2. Not really. I have no idea if this disassembly is corrrect.
3. Quora is prison for words.