If you did, did you remember to set the permissions in the last step?

I remember I did follow every single step with the permissions,
even set the permissions to 755 for oem.tgz.

Ok,

Then, the next time you the the PSOD, can you tell us exactly what the error message is. It should be about 5 lines from the actual bottom. They do a good job of hiding what the actual error was. You sort of have to look for it.

alright, so I followed the steps on this link:

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php

and then i followed the steps under "Instructions to modify oem.tgz if you're booting from a USB flash drive to add support for an unrecognized device."

I followed those steps exactly

I hope that sets the right permissions as well. So this results in PSOD attached

Yup,

It's complaining that it can't read your PCI.ID's file.

Gosh, I can't undestand those PSOD.

THat is quite funny though, I installed ESX on a PATA drive (which is supported)
used the commandline and edited the files as "root" and set the permissions are described in the link i just refered to. Could it mean that tutorial is no longer correct?

How to find which rights to set it to?

You've got me on that one. I haven't played with ESX 4 yet.

I've been placed in limbo as I just got the tech support response back from 3Ware that my hardware raid card drivers won't work on 4 yet. They are working on them and hope to have them 'soon'.

So, I'm 4-less until 3Ware can get me the drivers.

For ESXi the file pci.ids has moved to /etc/vmware.

I just found that as well,

so i added it to oem.tgz under the dir /etc/vmware

...rebooting now.. let u know if it will work

ok it worked for version 4 as well!

i will post the oem.tgz here in a bit