3 system engineers, 1 microtower, 1 esxi cd
Tonight we tried to setup vmware esx 3i 3.5 to a hp dx2300 microtower.
It was a painful night, first we searched for a hdd because original hdd should be saved as it was containing critical data for one of my project.
So me & Serkan called Arda and asked him to bring a sata hdd.
He came & we setup the hdd and burned out the iso & finally we were ready for the installation
Whoops we got the first error, memory was not enough.Logistics manager Arda :) took a ride to his place & brought 2gb ram.
Voila, installation was started, but suddenly we got an error message telling that esxi did not find any storage device to make the installation.
Anyway we googled a little but we could not find any resource.End of the night :)

So i decided to download & install esx 3.5 trial, but that attempt was kicked backed by the "competible nic not found" error :((
I was frustrated.

Late @ the same night while i was coding, i decided to re-google the problem.
Finally i got the solution.I had to change 4 chars in a py file in esxi.

If esxi could not find your sata drive, do the following

Press alt+f1 and drop to console
type root as the username and leave blank for the password
edit the /usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/TargetFilter.py file by entering
vi /usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/TargetFilter.py
find the def IDEFilter(lun) proc and change the "return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_IDE" line as "return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_ISCSI" 
save and quit by :wq!
type install

The original help document can be found @
http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive.php

What a wonderful night.