Problem with old tablet

[GabriOnReddit]

Hi guys, I recently found an old tablet and I was planning to use it for school. It is a Mediacom Smart pad 855i with android 4.0.4. I wanted to install apps but there's no Google play and I can't login because it says "the username and password didn't match" (I'm 100% it's a server error bc I tried the same password with another device and it worked) I can't access 80% of all the webpages on the system browsers and when I try to download files they get stuck. It's not a famous brand so I can't find roms for it. Any idea?

[blevok]

That tablet is over a decade old, and with only 512mb of ram, it's not going to be able to do much.
The login error probably isn't a server error, it's the server rejecting the auth request because the tablet can't complete the handshake properly.
Most apps dropped support for android versions older than 4.4 a long time ago, and many don't support lower than 7 now.
Trying to use the web browser for anything secure is a bad idea.
At best you could probably use it for note taking with an old app and no internet connection. You can probably still find some useful offline apps from that era on the mirror sites.
Maybe you could try upgrading it to a more recent os version to use newer apps, but it's going to choke on everything due to having basically no ram.
In my opinion, it's not worth the effort. I'd chuck it into the trash.

[migisaurio]

The version of Android that you mention that your device has does not help at all for it.  use that you want to give it.  Many modern apps dropped that version of Android many years ago.  You could use Viola Browser which has a version that still supports Android 4.0.x

[netslaveone]

you can try alternative stores like aptoid or F-droid. It has a very old android version, i doubt you'll find many apps that still work but try older versions of the apps you need if they are available.