So I've been reading the entry on terminals at the http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Terminal#Terminal_Categories, and it talks about top-level and submenu terminals. I'm assuming the submenu ones are the ones where you assign notes to them, but I can't for the life of me figure out what they mean by the 'top-level' ones. The submenus have models assigned to them which seems to mean that they're meant to be placed in the world, but the wiki implies that I should only put top-level menus in the world.

So what exactly is a top-level terminal, and how exactly to I go about creating one? And how do I assign a submenu terminal to it so that it can actually be used?

Is there a tutorial someplace that I missed?

That page is confusing to me... I usually go look at existing terminals to figure things out, or look at mods that do something similar to see how they work:

Ammo-Grenade Purchase Terminal
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6704
- lets you purchase ammo/grenades, so it would have menus and sub-menus as well as adding items to the player's inventory

There's another one that I can't find on FO3Nexus at the moment, it was called "House Terminal" and let you set the robot in/out of standby.

Or look at the Pitt DLC terminal for the ammo press, which takes items in/out of a container.

Perhaps this will help a little bit.
http://www.invision.tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/topic/2318-how-to-make-a-terminal/

The top terminal is the one you place in the game.
You make more terminals and never place them in game. This extra terminal would be the sub-menu terminal and you point to this from the Top Terminal.

Great! Thanks for the pointers, guys.