http://www.bethie.net/~programmer/fltest.bin is an attempt at making a mini bios for the floppy controller that will enable the floppy. It is not presently bootable, though if it works, I will start on that next. it should allow dos (and windows/linux/whatever) to access the floppy using bios functions.
it needs to be added to the bios using cbrom. it does not currently enable the floppy controller, as according to the via documentation it should be enabled by default. If it does need to enable something, send me a note telling what you enabled to get the controller to show up..
What this does:
this installs a *software interrupt vector* oooh... that tells interrupt 13 to jump to its code. note: I have NO idea how or if this will affect HD access, so please use this only if you have a backup bios or some other means of flashing.
Most of the code from here comes from a bios project called tinybios, which I assume properly deals with the hard drive issue, the extent of what I have done so far is to add the code that will make it look like an option rom, translate it from a386 syntax to nasm syntax, and put in the code that sets up the interrupt.