It's generally due to lack of CPU features. The reason 386 was dropped from all OS (and Microsoft did it in 1997 with NT 4) was pretty simple: it lacks the instructions the 486 added that make memory ...
How many 486s had 32M or more RAM? I think I had 32M in my Cyrix 686, but that was long ago and close to the end of the 486 era (almost all due to AMD's 133MHz or more 486 clone). Maybe they could ...