2Made me wonder if Epson has a built in page counter or clock that shuts everything down"
Correct, Epson do have that
Its supposedly to stop excess waste ink being dumped into the waste pads and spilling out of the machine - the idea is you change the pads and reset the counter - and pay a service engineer to do it
Usually the pads are OK and you can just reset the machie. Some need a specific key combination at startup, so a diagnostic utilty running
What model of Epson was it?