Hi, yes indeed, our 1st comp. arch. course at uni was based on ARM hence the influence. Unfortunately I did not have an Acorn machine.

I've built custom HW for the FPGA based SoC now too. https://youtu.be/ZDELr2QHxec?t=6m56s

Great project, do you plan to opensource it ? Would love to know how did you build the board!