OpenWrt 21 in Vmware [ESXi]

Trying to work out how to get openwrt working in esxi v6. I've taken the download from https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/21.02.0-rc3/targets/x86/generic/openwrt-21.02.0-rc3-x86-generic-generic-ext4-combined.img.gz

I unzipped it and then converted it to a vmdk image using
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/21.02.0-rc3/targets/x86/generic/openwrt-21.02.0-rc3-x86-generic-generic-ext4-combined.img.gz

I created a new vm with 512Mb Ram and pointed it at this vmdk, but it wouldn't boot. I used other linux (32-bit) as the type, and selected a single processor. I think I used LSI parallel for the bus. It looked like ESX just couldn't find the image on the disk.

Does anyone have a solution to this? Am I creating the vmdk correctly, or is there just something in the newer versions of OpenWRT that prevent this working?
Thanks

Not sure what drivers are compiled into that image, prob need extras to match VMware virtual hardware

afaik the VMWare drivers are only/mainly in the x86-64 image, so you can try again with that, and set it as Linux 64-bit.

Also make sure the virtual disk is either IDE or Sata. I think SCSI disk does not work with OpenWrt