Famicom Reliability

[80sFREAK]

Once you find a way to deal with the front loader's connector, which today may be a simple $20 Blinking Light Win kit, then it is as reliable as any other Nintendo machine.  My front loader's connector is original and is very reliable.  

As far as CPUs go, the RP2A03 without a letter suffix lacks the looped noise feature for that APU channel.  This causes the lack of "electrical noise" in Fire Man's stage in MM1 and Quick Man's stage in MM2.  The RP2A03E, RP2A03G and RP2A03H all have the looped noise feature and certainly will be found in any Nintendo console manufactured in 1985 to 2003.  I do not believe that the electrical noise in these games is unintentional because the noise fits the music so well.  I have seen a HVC-CPU-06 board with a 2A03 and another HVC-CPU-06 board with a 2A03E, so the addition was probably made within the first eighteen months of the Famicom's production.  

However, I cannot say the same about the Balloon Fight sample.  Apparently Balloon Fight was released for the arcade in a Vs. Dualsystem cabinet in 1984.  The Vs. System appeared to use RP2A03s without suffixes.  The game was released for the Famicom on January 21, 1985 and is a cut down version of the arcade version.  There is no harsh noise at the end of the game over screen as the Vs. Balloon Fight is emulated in MAME, so that may be how it should sound.

I believe, there is more differences between 2A03 and 2A03x. IIRC some games missing sprites,when played on 2A03.

Personally i prefer HVC-07 boards - much easier to desolder PPU for AV mod.

[P]

Opened up my red & white Famicom and it's a Nintendo 1984 HVC-CPU-07.

CPU: RP2A03E
Looped noise works as expected. So I can confirm that Kevtris is right that revision E has looped noise.

PPU: RP2C02E-0
As expected Micro Machines glitches in menus and even a bit on some levels. The menus shakes like crazy, I remember very similar glitches when I played this game on Nesticle years ago.