Thanks for finally getting to the bottom of it! I ran +V lines under the NC pin in a couple places on my old designs, so they wouldn’t be possible to fix with bodge wires. But it’s good to know the mosfets I’ve pulled from GooserCS boards are usable if I ever make a design with the external drain-source connection.
I really appreciate it when companies are looking out for us like this. Such forward thinking cost cutting measures as these make their products cheaper for the customer. I think other companies should take notice and also reuse their part numbers for different chips.