If you want a parallel universe experience, try an FM Towns. They are x86 based were introduced in 1989 in Japan and ran through the 1990s. While they do run DOS, they have their own custom windowing system with a focus on MIDI audio/visual production using both a built in FM synth and PCM sampled wave form.
It is also possible to run Windows 3.x and Win95 (as well as Linux) if you want, but "Towns OS" is pretty cool and makes heavy use of read-only optical drive where the user stores on memory cards or floppy disks rather than installing the OS on a hard drive. However, since it has built in SCSI you can attach a hard drive for storing larger data.
I'm a bigger fan of the Sharp X68000 (it's so pretty!), but the FM Towns has the great advantage of having a lot more games in English. These are really cool systems.