Prepare to Be Delighted By This Hardware Rendition of "Ice Ice Baby"

In 1990, most of suburban America was still pretty confused by the whole “rap” thing. Sure, there was probably a rapping youth pastor or high school principal in a D.A.R.E. after-school special that hoped the trendy new genre would help them relate to the kids, but that was cringey at best. Then Robert Matthew Van Winkle, AKA Vanilla Ice, came along and released his hit “Ice Ice Baby.” Suddenly soccer moms around the country were on board with the rap, and it was never controversial again. YouTuber James Cochrane released a video with a delightful hardware rendition of that classic song.

Every piece of this recreation of “Ice Ice Baby” was produced by some kind of hardware, and that even includes the vocals. Those were generated on a DECTalk Express voice synthesizer — the same kind that was famously used by Stephen Hawking. The first DECTalk device was released back in 1984, and a variety of devices and software were released until the mid-2000s. The DECTalk Express is controlled via a TTY controller though a MiniComm II, which has a built-in keyboard for typing out the text to be synthesized. It took a lot of work to get those synthetic vocals synced up with the rest of the music, but James managed to lock down the flow.

All of the instrumental parts are also created with hardware. The bass was generated by a Yamaha CX-5M 8-bit MSX “music computer” that has an integrated FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesizer module, and the synthetic bass sound was produced by a 3.5” floppy / CD-ROM head mechanism. The drum sounds come from hard drive heads, while the cymbals are simulated by the hard drive platters. Finally, the hand clap sounds are created by the electrical arcs in a tesla coil machine. For a bit of visual flair, James used oscilloscopes for waveforms. Legally, we can’t declare this the best version of "Ice Ice Baby" ever, but we think you know it is.