that actually has nothing to do with the appliance. it's a anaconda (=kickstart) related issue.
when the server boots, it gets a pxe kernel. that kernel is started and given the IP address you gave as ESX server address. if that is in a different segment that's been VLANed, it will simply fail because the traffic will get to that kernel with TAGs still on them and that networkstack doesn't understand them. this is true on all unattended setups and means that all installation processes until the first reboot, have to be done in non-tagged networks. either you allocate a NIC as a host-nic or you set the deployment VLAN as native on your switches.
hope that makes sense 
what john means i think, is that you can tell the server that it should listen to traffic from a specific VLAN tag only. we usually dont do that since all ports are trunkports where that option is quite useless. i think ibm has an option like that and you could check your bios and disable any options where VLANs tagging is implied.
also, i've seen this before with crosscables. is your laptop a 100mbit port and the server a gbit? gbit ports can't be set to fixed speed and duplex but they can be set to only negotiate on specific speeds.
the pxe part goes ok it seems but when the kernel's loaded it reinitiates the network stack that on some hardware takes too long and the kickstart process continues before the speed is properly negotiated. on physical switches you'd set 'portfast' on to prevent problems like that. on a crosscable you could try matching the speed of your laptop and server and set your server to only negotiate on that speed. also, set your laptop to negotiate too if that's not the case.
personally i have better experience placing a dumb hub between the two. i have a small 3x4 inch switch that's powered by my laptop's usbport that prevents a lot of crosscable troubleshooting
looks like you're not doing anything wrong! a quick check revealed that ESXi support in 0.85 is broken.
change line 13 and 14 in /var/www/eda/imp.php to this:
if ($ret > 0) {
exec ("file /var/www/esx/ienviron.tgz", $out, $ret);
if ($ret > 0) {
die ("FAILED");
} else echo "Detected ESXi";
} else echo "Detected ESX";
i'll update the 0.85 very soon where this will be fixed and where small updates are possible without having to download the whole thing anymore