rompler/sampler like EMU-Emulator

[Dimitree]

hi eveyone
this is not directly guitar-related..but..
I was wondering how the old 80's samplers/romplers (like the famous EMU Emulator II or Fairlight CMI) work, when no fast DSP were available.
The Emu Emulator II uses 27K/8bit samples, so pretty low quality.
My questions are about the samples management: are the samples loaded from disk/rom onto RAM once the user choose the sound he wants? and then, how the pitch shifting (if involved) works? I don't think there is a sample for each note..so.. What kind of pitch shifting algorythms could be involved? and how polyphony is achieved?