If you look at the lens mount on the camera, you will see a plastic tongue sticking up at about 1:00 outside the mount, designed to catch something on the lenses' aperture ring, which then spins that tongue around the circumference of the mount as you change apertures. If the lens does not have a cut-out region on the aperture ring for that tongue to fall into, putting it on the camera will break off the tongue. You can see right away when you try to mount the lens if it's going to try to push that tongue aside and break it. The very first, non AI lenses, did not have that cut-out on the aperture ring. That's why you can't used them. Lenses with the cutout, all lenses after the first non-AI series, will fit. Additionally, there are some exotic lenses that may foul the mirror inside--like the first 21mm which sticks out the back of the mount an inch. Those are on a separate list in the instructions.
But the thing you really want to be conscious of is watching that tongue when you mount a lens. If a lens has been home-modified to fit, by filing away part of the aperture ring, it may still work and fit, but it won't have a second aperture scale.
The KEH blog just did a thing on lens mounts that shows the details, but without much comment.
Dead Link Removed
Notice how in the second Nikon photo the black lens aperture ring has some areas cut back compared with the first photo. That's what you want to look for.
All of the different variations after that are irrelevant to you, and will work (with the exception of a couple of special lenses made for the first externally autofocus F model, which you probably won't come across), up to the modern era where the aperture ring finally disappears. You can't use those lenses, either, because you won't be able to set the aperture on them, but you can mount them and look through them without hurting anything). You CAN use modern autofocus lenses, if they have an aperture ring (AF and AF-D qualify) but they won't autofocus, of course.
