As the others said, it sounds like the computer is not seeing the floppy drive. Try a known good drive and 34 way cable to eliminate those.
On power up the system polls the drive select lines from 0 to 3, and if any drive is on that ID, it pulls the ready line low at the same time as it's polled so the system knows it's there.
In the A1200, CIA U8 outputs the drive select lines (_SEL0 to _SEL3) so if these are not being generated, U8 could be faulty.
To check, put a diode between _SEL0 and ready (_RDY) with the cathode towards _SEL0. Power up the system and see if it still takes ages to "detect" the floppy drive.
If so, there could be a possible fault with U8.
You can also check this with a digital storage scope if you have one laying around :-)
You can get replacement CIAs fairly easily, but they can be expensive.
U8 can also be tested by swapping it with U7. If the parallel port no longer works correctly (bit 3 dead) it proves U8 is faulty.
If you get REALLY stuck, you can send the MB to me in NZ for repair :-P
