Thats great news, I only logged in now, I couldn't PM you a few weeks back because your message box was full (like mine was before!) - shame they only allow a few messages.
But anyway, the final option was to just buy or borrow some spare boards, as you have done. There might of been something funny with the driver board that was upsetting the door optics and coin mech.. etc then I was going to suggest setup the machine without coin mech and just use the note acceptor if that works. Did you swap back and test that again, if it was just a loose plug all along that's good because you have a spare driver board.
Glad you got it working. These things sometimes chuck you in the deep end, but you end up knowing the machine more and at least you have some spare boards which are getting harder to come by.