I'm not around my apartment right now to see the name of the off brand scanner that got it at a thrift store. I also only use it once every couple of years but it's never failed and was dirt cheap...

Just a side thought if anyone lives around thrift stores or finds rummages and has storage space? lol

Thread 12 said "epkowa". You did not mention it in your last post. You tried?

None of my web-browsers were willing to open the epkowa link, and when I visited the SANE site I saw nothing related to it, so I just set it aside as another question.

Here you go…
https://epson.com/Support/wa00821

Seems, I have the same problem or at least a similar one.

Fairly annoying to buy a scanner that turns out to be poorly supported.
My idea is to run the scanner software in a docker container.
On the one hand I'm interested if this proves my device to be broken.
Or it might serve as an easy method to get the scanner working if we
manage to create a reliable docker image.

Pls. check this repo: https://github.com/ludwigprager/epson-v600

It takes you only two commands to try.
If you have a Epson-V600 you'd do me a great favour to try it out and report the result.
In my case the scanner goes into the error mode.

Thanks !