MIDI on the 8-bits began in early 1983 because of a small company in Los Angeles called Hybrid Arts. They created the first SIO to MIDI bridge solution housed in a molded plastic box with a footprint about the same size as most people's present day Smart Phones. This new device was called the MIDIMATE, and consisted of two circular 5-pin DIN jacks labeled MIDI-IN and MIDI-OUT, as well as two sync jacks for multi-track synchronized tape recording. MIDIMATE enabled the Atari 8-bit computer to be the first to actively support MIDI two years before the release of the Atari ST.

Hybrid Arts also produced a series of software applications meant to interact in a creative way with various MIDI instruments via this new interface (MIDITrack, MIDIPatch, DX-Editor).
The first experiments utilized a 1088XEL as the test bed due to it having an AUX-SIO header, which made it very easy to connect to the SIO port. Luckily the header specification that came out of the early stages of MIDI Muse development, had everything that was required.

A series of boards resulted from these experiments. Some of which were throwaways, and others proved to be far more useful. One of those was the MIDI XEL board that allowed the S2 module to be easily installed in the 1088XEL, bringing MIDI music in addition to the normal Pokey sound. This idea was improved upon by AtariAge member Sleepy's suggestion of adding a DB9 connection to the MIDI DIN interface, which later morphed into the MIDI XEL II board set.

Because of an inquiry from AA member Brentarian, a  simpler less expensive MIDI interface board was also created. It's design working well with a multi-player game of MIDI-MAZE,  supporting up to 16 systems in a MIDI Ring configuration. Thus the SIO2MIDI MIDIMATE compatible board was also born.