Abstract: A bridge device, for coupling a parallel bus to a packet network, includes a bus interface adapter, coupled to the parallel bus so as to receive bus cycles from a master device on the bus. An outbound packet register, having a bus address in an address space of the bus, is adapted to store an outbound network address header and payload data written to the bus address of the register by the master device in one or more of the bus cycles received by the bus interface adapter. A network interface adapter is coupled to the network so as to transmit over the network an outbound packet containing the outbound network address header and payload data from the register, to a target device on the network specified by the network address header.