I had no idea the 202 had timestretch. I know the pitch knob served the purpose of speeding and slowing samples but at different oscillations. I like how you write up these blogs, very detailed and easy explanations.
The 202 does not have a sequencer. You know why? Because Roland was just beginning to develop it when the 202 dropped. Deriving from the Roland MS-1, that sequencer was a glitchy mess. Kind of like a tape recorder but for MIDi notes. No bars or time sigs to set, no overdubbing or even quantize, just hit record and play the pads until you hit record again to stop. The problem with that was the sequence would randomly shuffle your notes around after being off for a day or two. So you get discombobulated samples tripping over each other than that beautiful sequence you made prior to shutting down. So Roland took the SP sequencer to the lab and by the SP303, they got it right. Not like an MPC sequencer, but they managed overdubbing, Swing, bars and time siq settings etc. But was still like a MIDI tape recorder as the MS-1 but way easier to digest. The 505 brought in that MPCish sequencer, creating a few patterns that are chained to form a song. 606 was the same but eliminated the ability to edit patterns after building them like the 505 can.
Well, I leave that here. Just so you know, Roland got a new 404 coming, so if you wanna start on that as a history of the 404. Heads up... it also has 16 pads