A nested function in MIPS - function

Question

My code has two parts; the first part is making a function that takes in two numbers and return their products. I believe I did this part right.
The second part is where I'm not sure what's the problem is. In this part I need to make a function that find the factorial number, and within this function, I have to use the multiplication function which I made in the first part. Please have a look at my code and tell me what am I doing wrong.
.data
Fa_message: .asciiz "\nFAIL TEST\n"
Pa_message: .asciiz "\nPASS TEST\n"
number1: .word 4
number2: .word 5
KnownAnswers: .word 20
START: .word 16
.text
main:
# taking in the numbers for calculation.
lw $a0, number1 # $a0 =4
lw $a1, number2 # $a1 =5
lw $t0, KnownAnswers # $t0 =20
jal func_multiply # calling the mulyiply function
move $t4,$v0 # store the product for any further comparisons
bne $t0, $t4, FailT # did it fail the test?
beq $t0, $t4, PassT # did it pass the test?
func_multiply: # the mulyiply function
mul $v0, $a0, $a1 # $v0 = number1 * number2
jr $ra
FailT: # print "\nFAIL TEST\n"
li $v0,4
la $a0, Fa_message
syscall
PassT: # print "\nPASS TEST\n"
li $v0,4
la $a0, Pa_message
syscall
###---------------------(PART-2)-------------------
lw $a0, number1 # load the number for the factorial procedure
beq $a0, $zero, factorialDone # (if the number = 0), !0 = 1
mul $a1, $a1, $zero # initializing $a1
mul $a2, $a1, $zero # initializing $a2
addi $a1, $a0, -1 # $a1 = (the entered number - 1)
addi $a2, $a0, 0 # $a2 = the entered number
jal findfactorial
###
#Stop
li $v0, 10
syscall
findfactorial:
jal func_multiply # calling the mulyiply function # mul $v0, $a0, $a1 # $v0 = number1 * number2
move $t4,$v0 # store the product in t4 for any further usage
addi $a0, $a0, -1 # $a1 = $a1-1
addi $a1, $a0, -1
bne $a1, $zero, findfactorial # enter a loop if $a1 does not equal 0
jr $ra
factorialDone:
addi $v0, $v0, 1
syscall

Answer 1

The jal instruction modifies the $ra register. So if function A calls a function B, then A has to save and restore the value that $ra had when entering A so that it can return to the correct place. This is typically done using the stack as temporary storage.
You can push a register on the stack (save it) like this:
addi $sp, $sp, -4
sw $ra, ($sp)
And pop a register off the stack (restore it) like this:
lw $ra, ($sp)
addi $sp, $sp, 4
Then there's your findfactorial loop. You're discarding the result of all the previous iterations, so your result will always be 1*2 == 2. The loop ought to look something like this:
findfactorial:
jal func_multiply
move $a0,$v0
addi $a1, $a1, -1
bne $a1, $zero, findfactorial
This way you first multiply 4 by 3, then 12 by 2, etc.
There are some other isues in your code. For example, if you jump to FailT you don't immediately exit the program after printing the message - you just keep executing the code after PassT.
Also I'm not sure what this is supposed to do:
factorialDone:
addi $v0, $v0, 1
syscall
If you wanted to execute syscall 1 (print_int), then this is incorrect because it doesn't set up $v0 properly (it should be li $v0,1). And if you wanted this to print the result of your factorial computation then that's not going to happen, because you have a jr $ra right before that, so the only time you end up at factorialDone is if number1 contained 0. Also, you'd have to set up $a0 with the value you want to print.