Square button famicom with gray wires?

[Salduchi]

I just got a low serial number Famicom in the H110xxxx. It's got a smooth dust flap cover but right off the bat I noticed that the wires for the controllers are gray and not black. Never seen that before. Not only that, but the RF connector thing has gray wires too. Is this a thing with super early Famicoms? I can only find one other example online. I will post the link.

http://famicomblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/mega-bargain-of-day-another-square.html?m=1

[Salduchi]

I doubt they were replaced. Even the RF has gray wires.

[P]

Most pictures I've seen have black wires like this version 03 board Jpx72 got.

I wonder what version of board, the CPU and PPU chips are yours? If it's earlier than 05, chances are it has the graphic glitches and other hardware bugs. And early CPU also means it shouldn't have looped noise.
The board version number is in one of the corners of the main board on earlier Famicoms (like on this 01). The CPU and PPU revision letters are written on the CPU and PPU chips.

[Salduchi]

I'll have to open it up sometime and check. It does not have the looped noise. Since my serial number is lower than Jpx72's famicom, if mine has the original board it would be version 03 or lower. Should be at least.

It appears Jpx72's famicom does not have a smooth dust flap. So they must have transitioned from the smooth dust cover to the rough dust cover somewhere between serial H110xxxx and H134xxxx. Maybe when they changed the dust flap they changed the wires too? If anyone has a serial number around H110xxxx or lower, does your famicom have a smooth cover and gray wires?

Edit: There is a H117xxxx on eBay that appears to have a rough cover and black wires. That narrows the transition down a bit.

[P]

I just read the above Japanese blog entry with the 01 unit. He says controller 1 has round buttons, while the controller 2 still has the square buttons, and the cable is grey. Maybe grey cable = older controller after all.

[Salduchi]

Very interesting. It's got to be from the first manufactured consoles. It's possible that the gray cords controllers could have been replaced with newer square button controllers with black cords before round button controllers were introduced.

Interesting eBay auction. I just messaged the guy asking if he knows anything about them.

[UglyJoe]

That Iwata Asks article I posted in the other thread says that early consoles had issues with the controllers becoming detached ("And I heard the cable connecting the controllers to the console would sometimes come off.").

If you compare the controllers with gray cables to the controllers with black cables, is there anything that looks different about how the wire connects to the console or to the controller PCB itself?

[P]

I wonder how that happened. It sounds like they used a different PCB connector on these earlier systems? On my 07 board the controllers are really hard to disconnect. Are the controllers compatible with newer Famicoms?

In the blog I linked to in the other thread there is a comparison of three different controller cords from up to down: A grey cable (square button), a black smooth cable (square button) and a black rough cable (round button).

[Salduchi]

So I have been doing a lot of reverse translating on google, translated "gray cord famicom" from English to Japanese then copied the Japanese text to google and searched. Turns out gray cord famicom is indeed from the first famicoms produced and are very rare, even in Japan. Revision 03 seems to be the last revision that has them. Famicom with gray cords were most likely NOT serviced during the recall and are all original from the factory, so any bugs within the hardware should be present.

Here is a Japanese twitter page, but there are many examples of this information if you do a Japanese search on google.

https://mobile.twitter.com/i/web/status/916843564566421504

It translates to this...

"Rare things are in stock today
It is the NES of the gray code even more rare in the square button NES
It is famous that the NES created in the early days is a square button, but among those, the first created is a gray code instead of a black code.
There are few square buttons, but the number is even smaller among them"
Post Merge: May 31, 2019, 08:22:00 am
This is an interesting article that talks about how the red plate on the front of the famicom is plated on very early Famicom and rubber on later models. You can tell by opening up your famicom and looking in the little hole under the red plate.

http://kitayama3800.publog.jp/archives/43307841.html
Post Merge: May 31, 2019, 03:31:19 pm
More information...

https://retorotoro.com/2017/11/24/初代ファミコンのコントローラーのゴム製四角ボ/

"Although only square buttons are rare, among the initial production (square buttons), for those manufactured within half a year from July 15, 1983, the controller code is a rare specification that the gray is . (Black code after that)"