Edit: I was curious what U29 was. It's a 74HC374, which is a chip that cost about $0.15 to $0.30.
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/e ... ND/1479974
Regardless of the price of that chip, I think that's a decent price you paid. It takes some skill to work on parts like that and there's quite a number of repair companies that will not do it and will only do a board swap. Usually you can't even find schematics to repair modern equipment in our throw-away culture.
Bla bla, nag nag. Again, I'm glad you got it solved.