So first a big cleanout job was in order then hop on the ebay to get a refurbed keyboard plus new Hitachi 80GB HDD and 1GB RAM. Also the battery was dead hence another Internet order and the laptop was ready to Rock'n'Roll. At this point I started to have doubts about my sanity as the parts were already able to pay for a refurbed fully working laptop but I somehow felt that there is still a good bit of life in this old dog with 1400x1050 screen.
After upgrading the BIOS and the controller firmware I managed to install Windows XP, updated all drivers and happy days were here but not for long...
4 weeks ago the battery stopped charging. Not knowing about this great website I went on ebay again to get a replacement motherboard, which turned out to be a complete base of T23 with modem and NIC. After 4 auctions I finally secured the laptop base for a good price and soon was replacing like for like (both are PIII 1.13GHz). To my dismay two weeks later the laptop was hit with a pulsating fan syndrom but fortunately I stumbled across the sticky thread here and fixed the fallen out inductor. Not even two days later the battery stopped charging. Again- opened the laptop and after resoldering the battery pins as suggested elsewhere on this site I managed not only to fix the e-bay acquired base but also the original lightning hit one.
Since then I am finally in calm waters with the laptop, have placed another order for an internal WiFi card to go instead of the mini-pci modem, so hopefully it will be here from China in next two week. I could not resist the price....
Finally yesterday I found an ingenious article detailing upgrade of the T23 with a built-in bluetooth for less then 5 Euro. I will wait until the WiFi arrives, do both together and report back.
The only thing I need to figure out is what kind of enchantment was cast upon this black box that made me to put so much effort into fixing it, perhaps some fellow Thinkpader's can explain this?

Till later,
SD