Prof Knuth's MIX computer - Card Reader and illegal characters
I imagine the concepts developed in the Exercises are meant to be formally part of the MIX specification, but there will also be some degree of arbitrariness.

For example, the MIX character set of $56$ characters supports only upper case text, but also includes three Greek characters ($\Delta$, $\Sigma$, $\Pi$) and an arbitrary selection of punctuation characters (no '%', '?', '!' or '^'; '/' but no '\').

Similarly, the restriction on allowed characters in the card reader is probably just to make the point that not all input devices will support the full character set. Knuth may have regarded the typewriter terminal (which presumably does support the full character set) as the main input for program instructions, and may have seen the card reader as primarily for data input.

I think you can make your MIX implementation a completely faithful implementation or a looser interpretation of the original specification - it is your choice.