Some linux notes about hardware inspection

PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnec)

PCI is the dominant bus standard. In linux, its device files are located at /proc/bus/pci.
Command lspci can be used to list your PCI devices. It can display <[domain id]:bus id:device id.function number> in addition to device type. You can use -v switch to get verbose information. Switch -k is useful to get corresponding kernel modules.
Resource: http://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/dd/pci.html

DMI (Desktop Management Interface)

From wiki

"Essentially, to the user, it is a table provided by the personal computer BIOS which can be parsed and which gives information about the BIOS and the computer system in a standardized way."

dmidecode is a tool on linux that can be used to get computer information (motherboard, BIOS, ...)via DMI.
DMI is part of SMBIOS.
Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Management_Interface

USB

Command lsusb can be used to list your USB devices.

Resources

TLDP (The linux document project: http://en.tldp.org/)

This web site contains a lots of useful HOWTO articles. Also it has in-depth articiles to introduce internal knowledge of linux kernel. Almost every aspect of linux is included.
A great PCI article: http://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/dd/pci.html

RedHat enterprise linux 5 Release Notes

http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.2/html/Release_Notes/singles/relnotesU2-x86.html

RedHat linux deployment guide

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Deployment_Guide-en-US/index.html
Although it contains some RedHat linux specific stuff, you still can find lots of common knowledge that is shared by other linux distros.

Linux devide list

http://www.lanana.org/docs/device-list/

Linux Foundation

Its publication includes some interesting papers which can be accessed http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/publications/.