Detecting of modem's turned on?

[Neil Bird]

   If I 'ifup' to dial up via my modem, I get a pppd that never works 
nor returns a failure if my modem's turned off.

   I'd like to set up a cron job to login overnight & do updates/big 
downloads (I don't pay for Net calls between 01:00 & 07:00), but I don't 
necessarily want it to happen every night, and I don't want my modem on 
100% of the time.

   Is there anything I can script that will do a noddy access to the 
modem (ATZ or something) and let me know if it's responding or not 
before I call ifup?

-- 
[neil at fnx ~]# rm -f .signature
[neil at fnx ~]# ls -l .signature
ls: .signature: No such file or directory
[neil at fnx ~]# exit