I'm gonna show my age here, but my Casio sk-1 got the ball rolling for me.
Then I sadly spilled iced tea on it, and broke it in 1987?
About a year later I got an sk-5 that I still have.
Around 1990 I graduated from using it for chromatic fart sounds to trying to make sampled beats with it, lol.
in 91 I got a big Yamaha psr arranger type keyboard, and basically played around with beats until 2000 when I bought a Zoom Sampletrack that I also still have.
Since then I've been through a couple mpc's an s900, and various software programs.
My current hardware samplers: Boss sp-505, Zoom Sampletrak, and the Casio Sk-5.
On the software side I use Shortcircuit for basically everything as my vst sampler, and have since 2006.
My DAW changes from time to time. I have had an FL Studio license since 2000, and use have used it much of the time.
I mess with Podium, and EnergyXT too on my old WinXP system.
And lastly old Golden Era hip-hop got me into using my sk-5 for something besides farts!