The PowerBook Duo 230's logic board has a whole cluster of capacitors in the DC section. These caps fail and leak rampantly and must be replaced for reliable operation. The LCD panel in these also has a handful of leaky caps that must also be replaced. Capacitor reference information for this model is available in the capacitor reference library. You can access it direct from the resources page as well.
The whole PowerBook Duo series suffers from very brittle plastic. It's literally turning to dust!
This means that these systems are now very fragile - handle them with care! What cannot be avoided though is hinge issues. The metal display hinges are mounted to small fragile plastic mounts. These mounts commonly fail, and will require repair and reinforcement with epoxy to get them working again. Another option is to 3D-print replacements.
Then there are the rubber parts. The Duo series used more rubber parts than other models did - the sides have rubber bumpers on them to allow for proper insertion into the full-size Duo Dock. From what I've heard, the type of rubber they used there thankfully doesn't melt, but does get brittle. I've seen some on eBay with chunks missing. The rubber feet and display bumpers on the other hand DO melt, and will need to be cleaned up and possibly replaced on your Duo.
The Duo 230 uses SCSI hard drives. These drives are a real pain in the rear, because many of them suffer from the dreaded rubber bumper problem. Basically, the head mechanism in Quantum-made hard drives of the time have little rubber bumpers that are used as stoppers for the drive heads. These bumpers turn to goo, and well, the heads just get stuck. When this happens, you might hear a quiet ticking sound from the drive as it attempts to move the heads and fails, or alternatively a loud one. You may be able to manually dislodge the heads, but the issue comes back again the next time you start the drive. The only way to fix this is to tape over or replace these bumpers to stop the heads from getting them stuck. Some drives have the bumpers inside the voice coil assembly, but a select few Quantums have them UNDERNEATH THE PLATTERS. Such drives are virtually unrepairable. Some Conner drives are also affected by this, but others aren't. If you've got a dead drive, open it up and have a look for anything the heads may be getting stuck on. IBM drives don't use these bumpers though.
The easiest (but most expensive) fix to this issue would be to replace the spinning rust in your PowerBook with a ZuluSCSI, BlueSCSI, or similar. These devices were designed just for your PowerBook, and they will be a lot more reliable (and faster) than a hard drive.
The PowerBook Duo series laptops use Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries as their main power source. Besides nearly all of them being dead today, they have a nasty tendancy to leak their guts all over the inside of your PowerBook. So check yours! Even if they aren't leaking, NEVER leave them in for a long time, working or dead. If they are leaking, get them out and leave them out until you crack them open and remove/replace the bad cells!
The PRAM batteries in these PowerBooks are not known to leak commonly, but it's never a bad idea to remove them anyway as the PowerBook will run fine without them.
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