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