Phone System

[cosmicfireball]

I'll soon be owning a 1992 sc300 into which an authentic Lexus Phone System was installed in its initial year. The car will reside soon in an area with no analog service. Does anyone know if there is some magic way to convert this system to a digital mode....or do I just use this fancy system to speak to myself more effectively?

[1990LS400]

A few people have said in this and other Lexus forums that they have had success in getting their analog Lexus phones "piggy-backed" onto a digital phone plan that they already had. Some call forward their handheld digital phone to their old Lexus analog phone when they step into their cars. Your phone company may say there is no analog but it is possible that they just don't want to talk about it. My tri-mode GSM/TDMA/Analog phone seems to spend quite a bit of time in analog mode - especially in rural areas and smaller midwest cities. But analog will likely go away within the next five years as the GSM network continues to expand. I think I read that phone companies have permission to drop analog in 2007.

At least one person in the forums said they knew how to convert the Lexus phone system to digital but I have not seen anyone come through with information on how to do it. I was hoping to get my steering wheel phone "command module" to work with my Nokia car kit and recently obtained the pin information for the Nokia car kit from European sites. While I still plan to pin the command module, I doubt that I am going to be successful due to the complex voltages required control functions on the Nokia phone.

European companies like Connect2 make adapters to allow steering wheel phone controls to work with the very common Nokia CARK-91H kit like I have but they make the adapters mainly for BMW's and a few other European makes.

[cosmicfireball]

A belated thanks for the information...