can't sync two slaves to master

[Len Conrad]

>In article <4.2.2.20000120163917.0423cf00 at mail.Go2France.com>,
>Len Conrad  <lconrad at Go2France.com> wrote:
> >additional info:
> >
> >turned on logging and in both the FreeBSD non-syncing slaves, I get:
> >
> >"Err/TO getting serial# for ....." for every slave zone.
> >
> >What's that and how to fix it?
>
>It means that the slave got an error or timed out while trying to get the
>SOA record from the primary.  Make sure that you can connect from the
>slaves to the primary on TCP port 53.

============

I can traceroute, ping, and telnet from both non-syncing slaves to the 
master (one is on same enet switch as the master and the NT BIND machine 
that slaves perfectly, the other BIN is one hop removed), and from a 3rd 
machine I've verified the there is a tcp service behind port 53 on the master.

also, what does a BIND log line mean in this format:

XX /156.21.1.2/as2.meiway.com/A

thanks,
Len