Great find! I really dig these circular stories that shape the electronics history. The story behind ARM has always fascinated me. The search for low power with efficiency kind of seems like the holy grail of the time. The Acorn story reminds me a lot of the Po Bronson novel "The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest: [1]
1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306422.The_First_20_Mill...
They were really out of cash. Jobs convinced Gates to give them $150MM as well (Apple's existence helped MS with antitrust; Apple desperately needed the cash).
As I recall, the dash was less important than the commitment to keep Office on the Mac. (Maybe IE too?)
They really were desperate for cash.
But as Jobs pointed out at a conference where this came up, the perception that the Mac had legs (because Microsoft still was committed to them) was far more important than the money.
If people don't have confidence in your platform, all the money in the world doesn't mean squat.
They had around $1.2 billion in cash reserves at the time.