i bought an A3k when they furst came out and put an 8gig hard drive in and 128meg of Ram. Over the top, but it is useful sometimes. 1 minute of 41khz stereo sampling needs 10 megs of Ram -\ mono needs 5 megs, all changes if u sample at lower kilohertz rates.
I was lucky, the version 2 operating chip only just came out as i bought it, and allowed 1 gig partitions (of which there can be only 8, as opposed to the Highlander immortals of which ..."there can be only one"). So yeah i was one of those guys who had a cheap equip source and played it for all it was worth;?
'''''''128 meg of sampling ram is handy for getting on your synth, freaking and tweaking for twelve point seven minutes, and then chopping out the good bits then extracting the sample and discarding the rest.
'''''''2 gig hard drive is all that's needed for convenience.
'''''''a highhat sample or vocal quote is probably 20k or something, as is a snare, kick, or synth stab (which, with loop crossfading can be turned into an infinite long synth note).