Don't despair! That's a common issue, probably a compatibility issue of the controller card or each of the other parts in respect to each other.
Also, some floppy drives or HDDs might make use of some pins that this specific controller card doesn't like to be used.
I'd try each component on its own, one after another. Anyway, it's difficult doing a diagnostics from the far.
Maybe the other Vogons users have some tips. I'm currently a bit busy. 😅

Edit: You also might like to try to use XTIDE Universal BIOS on an ethernet card (it's an Option-ROM that can do IDE HDD handling. BIOS HDD setting can be "none" then).
It helped me to get my Schneider Tower AT going (a 286 PC, too). Without it, the BIOS would hang/stop each time the DOM (an IDE HDD replacement) was connected.

Edit: BIOS HDD settings are often not portable, even though they have the same values.
In order to take a DOS installation from one machine to another, the BIOS has to be the same (as in: AMI BIOS - AMI BIOS; Phoenix - Phoenix, Quadtel - Quadtel and so on).
A workaround to this is using a virtual machine/an emulator with the same machine configuration.
Or using a modern LBA implementation. Also note that Windows, Dynamic Disc Overlays (DDOs) and BIOS may use different implementations.
Using XTIDE BIOS is most universal. You can use it on an ISA ethernet card and move it from one PC to another.

Take one step at a time: unplug the hard disk and remove it from BIOS. Confirm that the floppy type is correctly defined in BIOS and try to boot from it.

I've had 286 and 386 machines not boot and even throw FDD error at me with certain fast CF cards connected to the IDE cable. It would work with other cards (typically older and slower/smaller ones) though.

konc wrote on 2020-02-08, 14:30:

Take one step at a time: unplug the hard disk and remove it from BIOS. Confirm that the floppy type is correctly defined in BIOS and try to boot from it.

Just tried that and it didn't work. FDD controller failure, and I do have the parameters set correctly (it's 1.44mb). You can see the FDD light come on when it's supposed to be accessing, but no actual noise. I know the floppy drive I'm trying works.

Here's a photo of my controller, so could anybody determine what's wrong from this? I can't find jumper settings online.

I've been messing with the jumpers and floppy/hard drives for a while now, and honestly at this point is it safe to assume the card is just dead? I've even had some odd behavior happen a few times where at the POST screen I get some green garbage characters and the screen keeps scrolling down.

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2020-02-09, 03:13:

I've been messing with the jumpers and floppy/hard drives for a while now, and honestly at this point is it safe to assume the card is just dead? I've even had some odd behavior happen a few times where at the POST screen I get some green garbage characters and the screen keeps scrolling down.

Well the implementation looks identical to this. As a side note this controller doesn't support ATAPI so you won't be able to boot with, for example, an ATAPI CDROM connected.
https://imgur.com/a/YoaMVyj

So I assume you can try the manual:

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2020-02-09, 00:26:

Here's a photo of my controller, so could anybody determine what's wrong from this? I can't find jumper settings online. https: […]
Show full quote

Here's a photo of my controller, so could anybody determine what's wrong from this? I can't find jumper settings online.

KOUWELL KW-556N label
http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/c/I-L/20389.html

So, I managed to replace the controller card with another one and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtz0-gekfRo

I'm pretty surprised how well this game runs on here too. Also, I changed the HDD to a 2.5gb Samsung drive partitioned as 504mb. The only issue this machine has so far is that I sometimes have games just randomly crash out of nowhere. Like, I played Fate of Atlantis for about an hour with no problems at all but then I quit and go to run Stunts and it gets stuck at the loading message. Reset the computer and then Stunts suddenly starts. Idk what's causing that. Would the video card maybe cause issues like that? This Trident ISA VGA card I'm using has some issues with weird artifacts/corruption in the image at times, and I know it's the card since it does it on my 486 too.

Okay, the machine is actually being kinda flakey. I can't play FoA anymore and get a message saying "Room 4 Missing Object Code Blocks" with the SB16 plugged in. Remove it and the game starts up fine. I also tried an ESS AudioDrive and that just makes the whole system very unstable. At first it worked fine, then samples stopped working, and later it just wouldn't run any programs with it plugged in.

Have you checked to see if your power supply is ok?

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2020-02-09, 03:13:

I've been messing with the jumpers and floppy/hard drives for a while now, and honestly at this point is it safe to assume the card is just dead? I've even had some odd behavior happen a few times where at the POST screen I get some green garbage characters and the screen keeps scrolling down.

Very likely. The only setting regarding FDD controller on these cards is enable/disable. And some of these cards recently died on me showing the exact behaviour you described (fdd light comes on but head is no working). But it's always worth to check a different FDD cable or even different FDD.