I recently picked up both an Akai S6000 and Z8 off eBay and plan on integrating with OS9, OSX & Windows XP. I also have an EMU 1212 sound card in my Sony Vaio XP machine & hope to be flying samples all over the place.
I'm still sorting through these downloads myself and found there's no obvious reference source for the proper software setups besides possibly the Akai manuals which I haven't digested yet, but it can seem intimidating becaue there's no one-stop place to sort it all.
Hopefully between us before I'm done we can lock the varieties in stone and have a decent reference for this, I'm still in the testing phase for the samplers just to make sure they are functioning right and need to install a new HD in my VAIO as the old one had a virus at some point & I want a clean slate there, upgrading XP will be the only challenge there, perhaps MS has a current disk with all the service packs.
It should be an interesting process & I'll update as I make progress.
BTW IRL I go by Scott Bryson and started an Akai S6000 group on Facebook, I'm also in the Opcode Vision group there (seen you!) and a MOTU group. Opcode Studio Vision will be my primary sequencer while I'm going to try to get up to speed on MOTU Digital Performer 5.5.
My primary computer is a 2002 Quicksilver DP 1GHz & I just got a Newer Technology upgrade card to DP 1.7GHz or so which should be a fun challenge to install right with all the system tweaks having to be made. The biggest downside I see to these cards is one has to re-flash the firmware if you ever zap the PRAM besides installation is a little tricky. I have two nearly identical Quicksilvers so the experimenting will go on in the alternate.
I'm also going to try and integrate an Opcode Studio 5LX using a Keyspan SX Pro serial card and a Griffin ADB converter so I can use my favorite Apple Adjustable keyboard so it should be quite a vintage setup.
I was lucky in that both samplers look almost new, no rack rash and so far check out great.