That's one of quite a few wrong "facts" floating around. The black units already existed in late 1996 and were the final hardware (though the design was still to change). I know two people who are in possession of such an "early" black unit, and another one owning a 1998 model. Photos of these units exist as well.The "final" black units you are talking about which were designated FZ-21S1 were sold to the training market and not sold as game systems
When Matsushita released the FZ-21S1 as a set-top box media player, they didn't bother changing the design or hardware, so apart from a different date printed on the PCB, there's no difference between the FZ-21S1 that Matsushita sold in mid-1998 and the earlier black units. Not even the BIOS was changed, so you see a controller there in various help screens that was never available. ;-)
The grey units with blue buttons that are in the hands of a few collectors are also more or less the same as the black units, but they require a PCMCIA card to boot. They are from mid- to late 1996 and were part of non-Mac-based dev kits.
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