Even simple sample-based music is a whole lot more effort than it looks like, trust me.

You could pick up an MPC2000xl for a couple hundred dollars, single best piece of non-guitar music gear I ever bought.

I used to live with someone who had a 60. Loved it. I might save up but I sort of need a naptop etc etc.

laptop. Haha maybe I need both. I like to dabble in circuit bending with old things like gameboys and speak and spells, but I'm not very good at it.

I have an MPC 1000. Its a nice piece of gear, but my favorite to use as a midi controller is the Akai XR20 drum machine. It has the best pads I've ever worked with.

Yeah, the pads on the PC1000 aren't so hot. The 2000/2000xl have my favorite pads ever, followed by he old Boss DR-550 I used to have in high school, simply because it was the first drum machine I ever owned so I got used to it. I've never used an RX20, but I use samples from an RX10 a lot.

The main reason I'd consider a 1000/2500 is the increased storage, lack of reliance on increasingly hard to source 1gb CF cards (or worse, zip discs), self-sampling and generally the fact that in a pinch you can use it as a full-blown sampler, the earlier MPCs aren't really that great for stuff that isn't percussion/loops/one-shot things. But the build quality is lower, the clock isn't as solid (still better than a general purpose computer, but not as good as the 2000), the pads aren't as goo, and if you don't install the third party OS it's kind of a mess, they deliberately crippled a lot of important features in the software to force professionals to buy the 2500, for one thing (that is straight from a long time Akai employee; internally there was also speculation that the main OS developer deliberately sabotaged the OS because he already knew he was going to release JJOS, but I have a feeling the truth is closer to the line that he wasn't given the freedom to develop a good OS so when his contract an out he used his intimate knowledge of the hardware to develop the OS he would have given them if they'd let him).

http://54evil.com/discussion/776/commodification-of-creativity-cor ner-or-54evil-talent-show#Item_185

This might appeal to you, Homer.

I've been wanting to do that for years now. I tried it once with a guy who was sometimes on an old BBS, but nothing much came from it. We were mostly emailing .xm files we made back and forth and the process would take hours so we gave it up.