Good question. Around 2004, I was so enthused about finding a Korg DSS-1 for next to nothing, but the OS and interface killed it for me. The slow disk drive too. It was relatively simple to synthesize some digital waveforms and make a synth patch. Then you put it in unison mode with detune and it could sound amazing. But when it came time to save your work, the OS and drive tended to make me shrug my shoulders and click off the power. It was just easier to start from scratch next time. There was also its bulk. It was bigger than most 61 key keyboards in their flight cases. I put it on my 3-tier keyboard stand and the whole thing swayed and creaked and generally was not happy about having to hold up this keyboard. What a shame. It had potential. The samples were really gritty and weird sounding, not quite like any of the other samplers from that era.
My friend had a Roland S-10 that was kind of a piece of shit. In the late 90's, he was the first person in our circle of friends to get a sampler. At the time, it was pretty amazing to be able to load it up with four short samples AND save them after the power was turned off! (our only previous sampling experience was with Casio SK1's and Yamaha VSS30's. Much better machines in retrospect.) Unfortunately, that saving was done on Quickdisks. One sample per side, so to save your patch you needed two disks, and had to flip each one for the next sample. It was slow as shit. The interface and general capability as a synthesizer was not great. We mostly sampled loops from drum machines or synths on the lowest sample resolution, pitched them up or down, recorded a track, and then flipped it off again.
Not all old samplers were horrible. In school, they had
an original Ensoniq EPS which I used quite a bit. Great, intuitive interface, lots of interesting and useful synthesis options, really good built in sequencer, a disk drive that was semi decent. That may not be the fairest of comparisons, as the EPS was a couple of years younger than the other two, and a couple of years is a while in technology.