My guess is most change parts till they fix it, only a few trouble shoot like you have done, at pin level. So the history does not exist.
The no ballast with MSD is different, the coil is used as a transformer, pulsed with high voltage capacitor.
I missed Del's and Mattax posts prior to my post, but we share idea of too much coil current, that limit is set by sum of ballast and coil resistance.