You might want to try installing Windows / Linux to find out the specific the specific PCI id for the SATA controller. If you can get that, we can check the PCI id files to see if it will be recognized at all. I've seen at least one thread regarding ESX 3.5 running on a ML110 but it may have been that the server had the SAS controller.
Also with SATA controllers it seems ESX won't work with them if RAID is enabled and the driver for the SATA controller usually requires a software component to make RAID work. If you have RAID setup, you might want to try it as JBOD. Also, you may have a BIOS option to disable RAID on the SATA controller and then run it as a regular SATA controller.