Let's not forget Doctor T's contributions to software and hardware. Doctor T's software presaged the Ableton/Launchpad trigger system by almost three decades, with their "trigger from keyboard" page. Up to 100 sequences could be fired in a variety of modes from a simple Atari ST. Admittedly, they could have made life easier by having a simpler recording interface. Dividing 768 clocks by your chosen meter usually required a calculator for anything but basic 4/4. They also made some sophisticated midi matrices, fader controllers, and event generators that could lock up pyros and lighting desks to midi clock.
Gigging with Ataris was fun, as long as the midi cables weren't placed under strain/tripped over by drunk musos, and you remembered to bring the right box of floppies.
The struggle in a big midi studio was locking up the various flavours of proprietary din sync to the midi clock and the smpte generator, and getting the latency out of cv gate triggering, all without a visual representation of waveforms.
I don't miss the legwork, but I do miss the weird cranky machines and wibbly software we used to play with in the pre-DAW days. I sold my Stacey, with its massive 40meg hd, about ten years ago, when I finally felt comfortable about the timing on pcs.