Floppy disk controller problem?

[Uranium-235]

I'm getting a comptuer setup for a friend for her birthday (made from my uncles old computer parts). When I connect the floppy cable, the light stays on, of coruse (duh) this is the obvious problem of the cable needing to be turned around, but when I turn it around, it dosen't do anything, no light at all, and bios gives me floppy error. I tried 2 different cables, and two different floppy drives. I get the same problem. Is the floppy controller just messed up?

I also removed the cmos battery to see if resetting the bios would do it. and no dice