The settings mentioned about lvlamb are real mode specific, the BIOS is able to emulate a floppy/hard drive.
In protected mode, (i.e: 32-bit mode), the kernel is unaware of this emulation.. it communicates directly with the PCI bus, USB bus and eventually to the device.
Why your device isn't working is unknown, the fact that it's working on other operating systems may indicate the device is "quirky".. i.e: substandard implementation of the USB mass storage protocol.
Try booting an OpenBSD livecd, see if it gets detected..
