problems with floppy working on 8KDA3J?

My buddy is building a machine with a 8KDA3J and we can not get his floppy
drive to work.

1. It is not floppy disc. He has done multiple boot discs and they work
on his notebook which has floppy drive.

2. It is not the floppy drive. he has bought a new one and it does not
work either.

3. It is not the cable. He has tried 2 different cables and they both do
not work. He is using end connector (end with twisted cable). He has
reseated the connector in mobo and floppy numerous times.

4. The floppy controller is enabled in bios. He has set up the floppy to
be the first boot device.

At this point we think there might be a problem with mobo or there is some
obscure setting in the bios that we are missing. He needs the floppy to
install hard drive and SATA drivers when installing winXP.

Any ideas?

Thanks!