I've built a server for my home to use ESXi.  The main board is Supermicro X6DA8-G.  I have (2) Xeon processors SL7PD (2.8 gHz) and 6gb Infinion PC2700 RAM.  ESXi Update 2 installed beautifully and detected the onboard Intel ICH5R SATA controller (after I set the controller to SATA in the BIOS).   ESXi installer also detected the onboard Intel NIC.  Hope this saves someone a headache.

Perhaps Dave M can add it to his whitelist.

Regards,

John