I had also problems when I was installing MINT to IDE. I have never tried Magic with Falcon.
So, I tried to install MINT to CompactFlash adapter (IDE) with no success. I was never able to boot to MINT. It installed just fine, but at some point of first boot it just hanged.
Then I tried with SCSI. MINT worked like a charm. TOS worked just fine also from IDE CF.
After I have changed my NVRAM battery, I have plan to install MINT to real IDE HD. I hope problems was caused by CF-adapter and real IDE HD works better.