Great that you got to this point!
I haven't done the floppy installation in a long time, so I figured I'd pop the first floppy disk into my D8B rack-unit based Windows 98 computer (my actual D8B system doesn't have a floppy drive installed - it's got a CF card I can access externally, so I normally just copy files onto it that way, or clone from a Windows computer if I need to reinstall... which hasn't happened in years).
I'm getting exactly what you're getting... first a line "Mackie OS Loader v3.0... Loading... Please Wait" and then at the next screen, I only get a blinking asterisk on the right side.
What I'm thinking (but don't remember) is, that there would be a message shown on the D8B's built-in display, and that you'd have to press a button on the D8B console from there.
I did install from floppy before, but always had the console there when I did, and don't recall if there was something like that. But there most likely was. Otherwise, I couldn't explain why I'm seeing the same thing you do...
What I said earlier about that you should be able to boot at least to the graphical D8B splash screen, was for when the OS is already installed on the internal harddrive, and you attempt to boot without the console connected. But yeah... it seems like you probably have to have the console connected to get past the point with that flashing asterisk when starting from the first installation floppy.
From what you describe, I think you did everything else the right way. Time to bring the console home, I think