[KenWittlief]

10kHz is pushing it if each count causes an interrupt - if the internal counters are on an I/O pin then it can count at 10Mhz with a 40MHz clock on the uP

terminal count is when you preload the counter everytime it overflows - so with an 8 bit counter you can have it overflow everytime it counts to 1, or to 256 and everything in between, depending on what you set it up to preload with.