IDE is not supported for installation.

--Matt

I haven't tried it with ESXi, but with ESX you can install to IDE drives (just no VMFS on them).

Sorry - I should have said USB flash drive (not USB drive). You can boot ESXi from a flash drive and then use other storage (NFS / iSCSI) or attempt to modify ESXi to recognize the ICH8 controller. You can't store VMs on the USB flash drive.

Give this a try

1) cd /tmp/
2) mkdir -p oem/etc/vmware
3) mkdir -p oem/usr/share/hwdata
4) cd oem/etc/vmware
5) cp /etc/vmware/simple.map simple.map
6) vi simple.map
--- add the necessary PCI data for your devices
7) close vi - press ESC and enter :wq
8) cd /tmp/oem/usr/share/hwdata
9) cp /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids pci.ids
10) vi pci.ids
-- add the necessary description for your devices (this will be displayed in the console and VI Client
11) close vi - press ESC and enter :wq
12) cd /tmp/oem
13) chown -R 201:201 ./etc
14) chown -R 201:201 ./usr
15) chmod -R 755 ./etc
16) chmod -R 755 ./usr
17) chmod 644 ./etc/vmware/simple.map
18) chmod 644 ./usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids
19) tar -cvzf oem.tgz etc usr
20) cp oem.tgz /bootbank/oem.tgz
21) cd /bootbank/
22) cdmod 755 oem.tgz
23) reboot the host