Roland Clan Forums

I believe Front 242 and many industrial bands of the 80s had synthesizers that you could load with all kinds of samples. I know for a fact Front 242 used one extensively.

My question is: do these synths exist at all anymore? I base my empirical knowledge on the inventory and what Guitar Center sells. I want to stray away from the computer as I don't have a computer fast enough to play samples as fast as I'm sending them through MIDI. Any comments? Suggestions? It seems the synths that do have sampling (and triggered by the keyboard) are full blown expensive workstations.

You might want to look at Akai samplers and the like (other stuff which can load AKAI sample format). I cannot give any proper hints, since at that time I was a kid.
The good side - you find them at bargain prices today (if any at all), the bad - they usually load several megabytes of sample memory. Oh, and forget about USB, you're gonna learn about SCSI (which I never used either, got my first synth long after SCSI era)