[2] It quickly became commercially successful because of the rapid increase of computer communications speeds, and because of new minicomputer and microcomputer systems released to the market which required inexpensive operator consoles.

[b] Its lower cost was primarily due to a unique single printed circuit board design.

[4][2] Its innovative wave soldered single board design, which included the keyboard and all connectors, was packaged in an original clam shell enclosure.

Its 'Dumb Terminal' nickname came from some of the original trade publication ads, and quickly caught on industry wide.

Computer communications speeds were rapidly increasing, and a wave of general purpose and dedicated single application minicomputer systems were hitting the market from dozens of manufacturers.

With no fast low cost printers available, the ADM-3 (painted in a variety of custom colors for the OEMs) became the de facto standard.

Further optional add-ons included a graphics card enabling it to emulate a Tektronix 4010[9] and an extension port which would allow daisy chaining several ADM-3As on a single RS-232 line.

The ADM-3A's overall setup was controlled by 20[6][10] DIP switches under the nameplate at the front of the machine, beside the keyboard, including setting speed from 75 to 19,200 baud.

The 5×7 dot matrix characters were displayed in amber, green, or white phosphor on black (the cursor was 7×9).

[discuss] The caret character is also commonly used to represent the beginning of line or "home" position in regular expression dialects.