overly-strange reaction of modem to pon

[A R <arodriguez@worldnet.att.net>]

Not always when I "pon" I get my modem going. A lot of times it just
lights a few of the little lamps.
It is already the second external modem I use, and is the same. Now I am
using a motorola 28.8, and most of the times when I pon only the second
light (tr) turns on, the rest just remain off. Then I have to do poff,
some times this repeats sevral times, until finally some pon gets the
modem going. I can already tell from the lights that go on. Now, why is
this happening? Isn't pon the same sequence of orders to hardware at all
times?
This could probably be used for the X files.