Working on the microcorruption challenge. Coming in from a little experience with MIPS and I'm still figuring out some msp430 things.
The instruction set summary doesn't have a particularly descriptive entry for the cmp.b instruction, but I can see that it is being used here in conjuction with the jne instruction. The jne description: Jump to Label if Zero-bit is reset.
455a: f290 8500 1024 cmp.b #0x85, &0x2410
4560: 0720 jne #0x4570 <login+0x50>
So the cmp.b is comparing the byte (as indicated by the .b suffix) of the 0x85 immediate with whatever byte value is stored in the address 0x2410, but then I can only imagine this sets a bit in some register reserved for the jne instruction (aforementioned Zero-bit) to examine in order to know whether or not it should execute the jump? If this is the case which register would that be?