Hi, I installed 2.2 from floppy onto a pair of ibm thinkpad 750's (486sx 16M RAM), so the 486 chip shouldn't be an issue.
If you're having trouble with a lomem install, I still have some 2.1 CD's I've been dying to donate to a good cause (I belive I wedged debian onto a 386 4M system with the floppy images on these), if yo want 'em email me off the list and we can make arrangements. -Jon