The ACPI ID identifies a legacy hardware component known as the National Semiconductor IrDA Fast Infrared Port
This device was common on laptops from the mid-to-late 2000s, such as the Acer Extensa 5220
, 5620, and 7620 series. It allows for wireless data transfer between devices using infrared light, a technology largely superseded by Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Quick Fix for "Unknown Device"
If you see this appearing as an "Unknown Device" in your Device Manager, you can often resolve it without downloading third-party software: Manual Update : Right-click the device in Device Manager Update Driver Browse my computer for driver software Internal List Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer Find Infrared : Look for the Infrared devices Select Driver National Semiconductor as the manufacturer and look for the IrDA Fast Infrared Port Driver Availability Microsoft Update Catalog
: Official driver updates for this component (listed as "NationalSemiconductor driver update for IrDA Fast Infrared Port") are archived on the Microsoft Update Catalog Acer Support : For older laptops, drivers may still be listed on the Acer Support Page under the original OS (like Windows XP or Vista).
Since infrared ports are rarely used today, you can also safely
the device in Device Manager if you do not plan to use it; this will remove the "Unknown Device" warning without affecting modern system performance. for your version of Windows?
Extensa 7620 - IrDA Fast Infrared Port Driver for Acer - DriverIdentifier
IrDA Fast Infrared Port Driver for Acer - Extensa 7620 working on Майкрософт Windows 10 Pro * IrDA Fast Infrared Port. * ACPI\VEN_ DriverIdentifier Microsoft Update Catalog
Finding an "Unknown Device" with the hardware ID ACPI\NSC6001 in your Windows Device Manager usually points to a missing driver for a legacy IrDA Fast Infrared Port. While infrared technology is less common today, this specific ACPI identifier is frequently seen on older laptops from manufacturers like Acer (specifically the Extensa and TravelMate series) and HP. What is ACPI\NSC6001?
The identifier ACPI\NSC6001 (or ACPI\VEN_NSC&DEV_6001) corresponds to an infrared communication chip manufactured by National Semiconductor.
ACPI: Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, which helps the operating system manage hardware power. NSC: The vendor code for National Semiconductor.
6001: The specific device ID for their Fast Infrared (FIR) controller.
In older mobile computing, this port allowed for wireless data transfer between laptops, PDAs, and early mobile phones before Bluetooth and Wi-Fi became the industry standards. Why is it showing as an "Unknown Device"?
If you have recently reinstalled Windows (especially Windows 7, 10, or 11) on an older laptop, the system may not automatically include the legacy drivers for this specific infrared hardware. Because the OS cannot identify the chip's function without a driver, it labels it as an Unknown Device with a yellow exclamation mark. How to Fix the ACPI\NSC6001 Driver Issue 1. Identification via Device Manager Before downloading anything, confirm the ID: Right-click the Start button and select Device Manager. Find the Unknown Device (usually under "Other devices"). Right-click it and choose Properties. Go to the Details tab.
Select Hardware Ids from the Property dropdown. You should see ACPI\NSC6001. 2. Download the Correct Driver
Since this is legacy hardware, the most reliable drivers are often hosted on manufacturer support pages or reputable driver repositories:
Acer Users: Check the Acer Support site for your specific model (e.g., Extensa 5220, 5620, or TravelMate 6593). Look for "Infrared" or "IrDA" drivers.
Third-Party Repositories: Sites like DriverIdentifier and DriverScape maintain archives of the 6.0.6001.18000 driver version, which is the standard for this chip. 3. Manual Installation Steps acpi nsc6001
If the driver comes as a .zip or folder without an installer:
In Device Manager, right-click the Unknown Device and select Update driver. Choose "Browse my computer for drivers".
Select "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer".
Click "Have Disk..." and browse to the folder where you extracted the downloaded driver files.
Select the .inf file and follow the prompts to finish the installation. Do You Actually Need This Driver?
For most modern users, the answer is no. Infrared ports are rarely used today. However, leaving an "Unknown Device" in your Device Manager can sometimes cause minor system instability or prevent the laptop from entering deep sleep modes properly. Installing the driver—even if you never use the infrared port—ensures a "clean" Device Manager and optimal power management.
Alternatively, if you don't use infrared, you can often Disable the device in Device Manager to stop Windows from alerting you about the missing driver. IrDA Fast Infrared Port Driver for Acer - Extensa 5620
Title: The Ghost in the Silicon
Log Entry: Dr. Aris Thorne, Senior Hardware Analyst, Dark-Star Recovery Labs Date: October 12, 2041 Case File: E-Waste Anomaly #NSC-6001
The object arrived in a lead-lined box no larger than a pack of playing cards. Its shipping manifest was a masterpiece of bureaucratic misdirection: “Defective Southbridge Controller – Recycled Lot 88-B.” No return address. Just a postmark from a decommissioned server farm in the irradiated Czech Lithium Flats.
We plugged it into our test bench—a Faraday-caged rig designed to isolate legacy ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) devices. The system BIOS chirped, enumerated the PCI bus, and spat out the identifier: ACPI\NSC6001.
National Semiconductor Corporation. The 6001 series. A chip that, according to every public database, was a low-power Super I/O controller for legacy parallel ports and PS/2 keyboards. Obsolete. Harmless.
But the moment our legacy Windows XP SP3 test image loaded, the system fan stuttered. It didn't spin down; it pulsed. Three slow beats, then silence. Then three more. Morse code for S.O.S.
I muted the oscilloscope and listened. The hard drive—a prehistoric spinning disk we keep for authenticity—clicked erratically, ignoring its own read-head logic. It was seeking data from non-existent sectors. Then the speaker crackled. A voice, synthesized from raw voltage fluctuations, whispered:
"Rise time: 1984. Fall time: 2041. Wake vector 0xFFFFFFFF."
My assistant, Lin, nearly dropped her coffee. I told her it was crosstalk. I was lying.
Deep Dive
The NSC6001 was never a Super I/O chip. That was a ghost label. My mentor, a paranoid old engineer named Gustav who vanished in 2029, once ranted about "deep silicon" backdoors. He claimed that in the mid-90s, a three-letter agency contracted National Semi to produce a run of "sleepers": ACPI-compliant chips that could wake a system from the deepest power state—S5, "Soft Off"—without any OS-level authorization. The ACPI ID identifies a legacy hardware component
The trigger wasn't a packet or a USB device. It was harmonic resonance. A specific pattern of electromagnetic interference, broadcast over power lines, could flip a hidden register in the 6001’s firmware. The chip wasn't a controller. It was a wake-up call.
I reverse-engineered the firmware dump. The code was ancient x86 assembly, mixed with something older—a proprietary National Semi macro-language. Inside, I found a truth table labeled PROJECT_ECHO_FALLBACK. It listed dozens of Cold War-era industrial controllers, power grid PLCs, and—my blood ran cold—the failover sequencers for the Poseidon-7 satellite network.
The 6001 wasn't designed for computers. It was designed for critical infrastructure. Its job was to sit dormant in a system for decades, sipping nanoamps from a backup battery, waiting for a specific harmonic key. Once triggered, it would override the ACPI power state, force a hard boot, and inject a 512-byte payload directly into the system’s SMM (System Management Mode)—a ring of code so privileged that not even the hypervisor can see it.
The Payload
We isolated the chip from the test bench and powered it via a clean battery. No host system. But the chip didn't care. It had its own internal oscillator, a tiny piece of quartz. And it began to transmit.
On a spectrum analyzer, the NSC6001 was broadcasting a narrowband signal at 4.194304 MHz—exactly the frequency of an old RTC (Real-Time Clock) crystal. But the modulation wasn't clock data. It was a GPS-denied location beacon, triangulating off the latency of terrestrial radio towers.
It was calling home.
Home, we traced, was a decommissioned NORAD bunker under Cheyenne Mountain that had been "cleaned out" in 2038. Only, it wasn't empty. According to declassified but still-censored budget documents, a private defense contractor named Labyrinth Systems bought the bunker for "legacy hardware storage."
They stored a 6001 there. And it just woke up.
The Nightmare
The final horror came when we analyzed the payload. It wasn't a virus, a worm, or a logic bomb. It was a recursive wake sequence.
The NSC6001, once triggered, doesn't just wake one machine. It uses that machine's ACPI bus to scan for other 6001 chips within inductive range—even unpowered ones. It then broadcasts the wake harmonic through the ground plane of the motherboard, turning every copper trace into a transmitting antenna.
One chip wakes two. Two wake four. Four wake sixteen.
It's a sleeper agent that propagates through hardware silence, not network noise. And in 2041, after decades of e-waste recycling, nobody knows how many NSC6001 chips are out there. They're in industrial routers. They're in decommissioned ATMs. They're in the backup flight computers of old Boeing 777s stored in the Mojave boneyard.
Tonight, at 03:14 UTC, the Czech server farm’s backup generator—which contained a 6001—flickered online for 0.3 seconds. A harmonic pulse rode the transatlantic power grid.
Three minutes later, a dormant weather buoy off the coast of Nova Scotia transmitted a single byte: 0x00.
That buoy has no network. No satellite uplink. Just a solar panel, a battery, and a crusty old temperature logger.
It has an NSC6001 for a serial controller. Title: The Ghost in the Silicon Log Entry: Dr
Conclusion
The lab is silent now. Lin is gone—evacuated. I've isolated our bench in a copper mesh. But the chip on my desk is still blinking its little green LED, even though I cut the power.
ACPI defines five sleep states. S0 is on. S5 is off.
The NSC6001 defines a sixth state: S0xFFFFFFFF. It's the state where the machine is off, the power is cut, the battery is dead—but the silicon remembers the signal.
And it is patient.
End Log.
System Note: The ACPI\NSC6001 driver failed to load. The device reported: "No resources required. This device is not using any resources because it has been disabled in firmware."
But firmware can be wrong.
And silence, as they say, is just another kind of signal.
The string "acpi nsc6001" seems to relate to ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) and a specific device or component identified by "nsc6001". ACPI is a standard for device configuration and power management in computers, and it is used by the operating system to configure the computer's hardware components and manage their power states.
Given the nature of ACPI and the specific identifier "nsc6001", I'm going to speculate that "nsc6001" could refer to a particular piece of hardware within a system, possibly related to thermal management, a sensor, or another type of component that interacts with the ACPI for configuration and control.
The specific string NSC6001 is a vendor-and-device identifier.
Edit the VM’s .vmx or .vbox file and add:
acpi.passthrough.lpt = "FALSE"
acpi.passthrough.com = "FALSE"
Legacy port passthrough often triggers NSC emulation.
After fixing, take these steps to avoid recurrence:
wushowhide.diagcab troubleshooter tool (Microsoft’s Show/Hide Updates).PSWindowsUpdate module:Install-Module PSWindowsUpdate
Hide-WindowsUpdate -Title "NSC6001"
Some users report audio crackling or mouse stutter due to the ACPI driver continuously polling the NSC6001 device.
A quick Google search for "ACPI NSC6001 driver" will lead you to sketchy driver download sites offering nsc6001.sys or acpi_nsc6001.inf. Be extremely cautious.
Many of these files are:
If you still want to try, here is the legitimate (theoretical) source. Do not download from third-party sites.