I picked up the original unreal tournament on steam the other day (one of my favorites) and wanted to check out the game music files, so I downloaded openMPT to play with them.  Man, what a blast from the past!  It really took me back to using kurzweil k2000 and limited sampling options.  Really fun stuff... 
anyone using tracker software that has tips for older formats?  I know renoise is a modern variant, but I'd prefer insight on progs that were leading edge in the 90's.

British magazine COMPUTER MUSIC has a monthly sidebar on them.  
 
It is one of my favorite magazines and an electronic version is available for a reasonable price.

Trackers. Wow. I haven't used a tracker since I was using my Amiga. Octamed comes to mind. What a program that was. So much fun.

mudgel
I haven't used a tracker since I was using my Amiga. Octamed comes to mind. What a program that was. So much fun.

LOL!! Same here. Yeah, it was MED at first and then OctaMED followed. A great piece of software, as I remember at the time, but I doubt I'd ever go back to it.......

I had so much fun with OctaMED. No MIDI, just an 8-bit sampling cartridge. There's something about typing numbers into columns and rows which makes you approach music completely differently. I wrote some pretty intricate stuff.