People ran trackers on computers when they couldn’t perform at 1/100th of what they’re at right now.
You could go to your local electronic store, buy the cheapest laptop they offer and you would be fine, I bet.
Though, if you’re going the laptop route- I’d recommend the full keyboard layout- with the number pad on the right. There are shortcuts even down to the left and right shift key- those extra buttons would be so helpful for renoising it up
I never got into trackers and I am a little bummed I missed the boat.
My initial interest was DJing, around 1996, and my desire to leave bands behind and make my own solo electronic music didn’t come until 1998. The influential people around me weren’t using trackers. They were more into Opcode Vision, the MMT8, Kawai Q80s, and old Roland gear. Software was only used for MIDI.
I’m understanding now that had I been closer to the D&B heads, I would have definitely been exposed to Trackers and caught the Amiyah’s bug.
But instead the earliest software I used for audio was Rebirth, Fruity Loops, and SoundForge.
Watching videos like this one, fills in some blanks for me, as to how so much music was created in the 90s.
So many samples on one track! No wonder I get old school vibes when I dive into soundlocks and samplelocks on 
gear. 
I could have got up and running much faster with Trackers than piddling around with my DR-770, ES-1, and a bit of software on mom’s old Gateway computer. At least it had a SoundBlaster, though.
Looking back at these old Tracker videos now, they were way more logical to how my brain was working, and how I gravitated to sampling (MPC) and away from MIDI based production.
I remember watching a band mate programme drums on his pc with a tracker, they sounded awful. Then we recorded that onto a tascam 4 track, and layered on the guitars.
Later on I got some tracker trucks. Awful. Indies are way better.
The day I bought the sample-adapter for my Amiga 500 changed my life! I spent so many hours in front of that machine. I made really bad music! 
I used it to make full tracks and used it as a band, playing drums and bass while writing songs on the guitar.
Trackers were my entry into digital music making, but I need to be honest: I am very happy, that I don’t have to use trackers anymore
A little off topic, but was it the SoundBlaster 64 that came with memory for own samples that you could play via midi? First time I made my own Drum-Patch from Sampling my own Drum-Kit. Oh, the memories.
No, t’was the 32.
I would have killed for the AWE32 with onboard RAM.
Could never find the right SIMMs for the 2 slots on the 32.
Keep in mind that renoise adds a lot of additional processing, filters, and effects on top of what 90s trackers offered.
Probably my first reminiscence related to trackers is ProTracker on my uncle’s Amiga 500 on early 1990’s At that time i realized what demoscene is and started to follow it.
In 1996 i started to compose my own tracks on my PC computer using Scream Tracker. From 1996 to 2003 i was using Scream Tracker, Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, Buzz, Psycle, ModPlug Tracker and bunch of various softsynths to generate my own samples. I was writing and hearing modules almost every day. After that time i switched to software like Acid, Fruity Loops and Ableton Live and never get back to trackers. Right now i have few hardware boxes including Elektron silver ones 
Because of Polyend Tracker i started recently to think about compose using tracker again
Biggest pro of Fasttracker II and other trackers for me was the ease of sharing songs with friends and others (even in times with no internet), friends shared floppy disks full of mod and xm files. Never a lack of new inspiration, new samples, learning from how others build up their songs and making remixes or complete new songs. Open innovation for music making.
It would be really cool if the Octatrack or any other song sequencing device would have wifi build in and you can share any time your song/part of songs for others to build on, learn from.
It would require a new Elektron file standard or even better, similar to what Polyend is doing with their tracker, just leverage the mod standard. Endless fun with the modarchive.org
I remember Octamed on Amiga, remember being amazed at how easy it was and though I must be ‘cheating’.
No, I haven’t but would love to try it out. I’ll try to remember to ask @Dataline about it when we’re not busy playing Nintendo 64 together
Sunvox is the only tracker I’ve used. Never got the hang of sequencing from Ableton or Logic anyway. I was dumb enough to learn it on iPhone first. Just recently got the desktop version.
i copped an m8, eagerly awaiting shipment!
I was a bit late catching the tracker wave too, but SunVox is glorious.
Yea lets remember to check the Polyend Tracker next time we are bored of Mario64 & Fzero64…
Tough one to be bored from, it will take time - but it will be worth it 
Started with fasttracker 2, moved on to madtracker 2, and finally renoise. Stopped using it and ended up giving my license as a birthday gift to a friend. But lately I stumbled upon some old songs of mine that I made with mt2 and logic, and I’m thinking I’ll buy a new renoise license soon. So much more fun programming certain types of drums in a tracker than a piano roll
Maybe
Are you getting a M8 Ess?
Started out on a cracked copy of FL that a friend brought over, but soon found Jeskola Buzz and got really into its modular design. SAmusing coincidence: It also had recording buffers that could be recorded into with a record trigger, much like the Octatrack!
Then spent years trying to find software that brought that modular design together with non-tracker interface, used Energy XT (1) for a while, then tried to get into 2, but eventually switched to Ableton while fiddling with Renoise on the side.
Now, years later, I’m using Elektron boxes that are heavily inspired by the tracker mindset, and wishing there was an Elektron Modular 