Abstract: The present invention is an apparatus for adapting transmissions between an industry standard data bus of a host computer having a host memory and a fiber channel coupled between said host computer and a peripheral storage subsystem having at least one disk drive, which apparatus comprises an interface logic coupled between the industry standard bus and a local bus of the apparatus; a buffer memory coupled to the local bus; a multiplexor/control device coupled to the local bus and being disposed for transmitting therethrough address and data; a fiber channel controller disposed for formatting header and data structures that meet fiber channel protocol, which controller is coupled to the multiplexor/control; a gigabit link module disposed for converting the header and data structures from a parallel format to a serial format and being coupled between the fiber channel controller and the fiber channel; a microprocessor disposed for providing service requests from the host to read and write data from the host me