Here is a nice series of articles about sampling:
http://www.soundonsound.com/index.php?section=%2F&url=%2Fsearch&Keyword=Art+of+Sampling&Keyword=lost+Art+of+Sampling&Year=+&Month=+&Words=All&Summary=Yes&Section=0&Subject=&ShowResults=yes
A lot of the very basic features that 25 year old hardware samplers already were capable of - and Renoise is still not - (like sample start automation and velocity/keyzone corssfading) are described here, with concrete usage examples.