Pokun wrote:Famicom's with the earlier APU (without looped noise mode) are seemingly quite rare since Nintendo took back most of the earliest square button systems. The PPU where $2004 being write only is probably more common though. Most Famicoms I've seen are HVC-CPU-05 or later, and they usually have the newer CPU but maybe about half have the newer PPU.
To spell this out explicitly:
1- 2A03letterless has no tonal noise
2- 2A03E,G,H, 2A07 and 2A07A have tonal noise
3- 2C02A,B,C,D,E, 2C03, 2C04, 2C05 cannot read from $2004
4- 2C02G can, but writes to $2003 corrupt sprite memory
5- 2C07, 2C07A can both read and write to $2004, writes to $2003 work as intended, but sprite memory is inaccessible sometimes, regardless of whether a picture is being drawn
6- 2C02H - who knows
Pokun wrote:Not a chance! 60-pin systems (non-Nes) are far more common.
Over the years, there
might be comparable numbers of 2C02-based and cartridge-accepting famiclone systems. Wikipedia claims 62M authentic NESes/Famicom, of which more than half are in the US, more than a third are in Japan, and the remaining 1/7th are probably the authentic PAL consoles.
On the other hand, we know of more than
377 famiclones, and I bet none sold fewer than 50k units. 377·50k=18M all by itself, comparable to the number of authentic Famicoms.