>A REAL state machine is a simultaneously switchjing (clocked or ripple
    >through) piece of hardware.

    Ah, you mean a state machine is a microprocessor, then.

Well, a microprocessor is certainly a state machine (of rather large
complexity, of course.)

In hardware, "state machine" is usually used to describe a piece of logic
where the inputs and current state control transitions to a new state, and
the outputs are dependent only on the state (as opposed to logic whose
output is a combinatorial function of the inputs.)  It's typicaly
implemented as a couple of roms.  The first rom maps inputs and old state
into new state, and the second rom maps the new state into outputs.

In software, "state machine" is usually used to describe code where
program flow is controlled primarilly by a single small integer variable
(the "state".)  Other control decisions affect the state value, rather
than directly modifying the program flow.  Software types are likely to
cheat and cause their code to break by doing things only when a state is
entered or exitted.

BillW