Headdesk[2]: Grrr
Based on the fact that a similar (bigger) drive has been running on my recording box for several days under UbuntuStudio, I'm trying a 2.6.33 kernel from backports.org. Might work. If it doesn't, Fry's is selling 500GB Maxtor SATA drives for $99 this weekend. They're a little older, so probably not SATA/300.
In case you were wondering, no, Seagate's DOS tool doesn't know how set most of the parameters on the drive. Their Windows tool does, of course. The probability that I'll be buying Seagate drives in the near future is diminishing rapidly.