I2CRead & I2CWrite not working as expected

[richard]

to my surprise i found the 24c32 on my ds3231 module did not behave as expected when the resistor block [circled] was removed
to conserve energy for a battery device


the address was still 0xAE, contrary to the datasheet , so i looked at a data sheet from another manufacturer, where for a 24c32n
they did not describe this address pin biased low behavior for their version

to ensure 0xA0 the pins needed to be grounded

so how sure are you that the datasheet matches the chip?
its an easy test