Epson V500 Photo Scanner + Ventura +scanning negatives

Anyone have any luck with getting the V500 Photo to work with Ventura? I contacted Epson and their answer was "buy a new scanner, the V600." The ImageCapture works, sort of, but you can't really control it. Sometimes the selection window when dropped over a perfectly exposed negative frame will turn it way too dark and flat, way underexposed, and there's no way to control that. Sometimes, the control window will snap onto a negative frame and be perfectly exposed. There's no rhyme or reason.

Basically Epson said "buy a new scanner, the V600.... and it'll work until we decide not to update the software and then won't tell you and hope you'll buy another new scanner from us..." Gosh, such a disincentive to buy another Epson.

Anyone have any luck getting the V500 Photo to correctly expose negatives?