quicknick wrote:

Have you tried booting from a DOS bootable floppy with only the FDD connected and all IDE drives disconnected (and set to "none" in BIOS)?
You say POST is very slow. It is the same if you disconnect ALL drives?

I'm gonna try it right now.

LE:

It posts a lot faster now, but still...

Oh... and it looks like it's not even accessing the drive. The floppy green LED doesn't turn on.

Are you 100% sure that the drive, cable and boot disk are all in working order? Can you test them on another system? Unless you are certain they all work, this is a shot in the dark... (OK, if the LED doesn't light it means it didn't even try to read the disk, so the problem is likely the cable or the drive).
If your floppy cable has two connectors with a "twisted" segment between them, try also the other connector...

My Packard Bell's Intel Orlando NV430VX had that similar issue which was the CD-Drive/HDD/FDD was not recognized