Thanks for all the tips.  I am going to hook up a very short cable to another board and see if that makes a difference, while building up a shielded cable for the real design.  As far as pull-ups, since the master has pullups, think they are 4.7K to +5, maybe there isnt a need for them to be on the slave side then, for some reason I always thought they needed to be associated with each slave.
 
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