While having installed ESX a number of times on HP blades / SAN storage, I'm a noob to customising ESXi for whitebox at home.

I have a small cheap test machine based on a Gigabyte H67N-USB3-B3 and have customised an install CD based on the mkesxiaio_4.1 script. I was spurred on from reported success in this post http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2918&hilit=rtl8111e. The ultimate plan is to build a bigger whitebox and use some direct IO based devices.

I have however struck the stage where the install is reporting no supported device to write the VMware ESXi 4.1.0 image to.

Thre is a real possibility that its noob error. Steps thus far:
a) I have checked the PCID for the SATA device to in fact be 8086:1c02.
b) Check HDD is in AHCI mode in BIOS
c) I have edited pci.ids and simple.map when prompted in the script and have inserted the SATA device codes in numerical order following the same format of the files.
d) I have the file RTL811_8168_p55_integr_SATA_Ctrl.(AHCI).oem.tgz in the same folder for inclusion for the LAN controller.

What are the next things to look at / read?

ESXi version: 4.1 update 1
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3
BIOS: F5
CPU: i2100
RAM: 2x2Gb

OK found it! Don't set AHCI mode in the BIOS, set RAID mode then the HDD appears.

Its late now, but at least I can see the drive. More testing over the next couple of days and hopefully an installation soon.

So the detail ...

BIOS revision = F5

BIOS setting within "Integrated Peripherals"
XHD = Enabled
PCH = RAID (note with XHD enabled this option is display only)
SATA 0-3 Native = Enabled

Runs on SATA 2 or 3 port on the mobo. I am using a 1Tb SATA 3 drive (clearly it falls back to SATA 2 given I tried both ports)