We have a design with a chain of PCA9517DP parts (we are currently in the middle of upgrading them to the newer part) and we are seeing an intermittent issue at the end of our chain.
Our design is modular; there are "n" nodes in this chain of redrivers, but the last one is always driving no devices, i.e. it is "open". What we see is when we query the last node to see if there are any other devices after it (something we do for each node), the last node is essentially driving an open circuit; the I2C lines are only tied to 10K drivers, and we see that SDA (and SCL) go low permanently.
We are seeing the driver fail permanently when we merely query addresses on this last node, where there are no devices. It doesn't happen right away, but after some cycles on the PCBs. The issues aren't fixed until we replace the driver with another one.
Has anyone come across this issue before? Are we doing something wrong by driving the bus with no devices on it, besides just pull ups?
