Almost all of your hardware/peripherals/devices under Linux are accessed through the use of their corresponding special device file. These files are found in the /dev directory:
$ ls -l /dev | less page through the long listing of /dev
As a small sample, here are some of the most common devices you might be working with (these names are not absolutely guaranteed, so check your system documentation first):
first serial port
second serial port
first parallel port
first IDE hard drive
first SCSI hard drive
IDE CD-ROM drive
SCSI CD-ROM drive