Inherited an old Droid - want to use it as a security camera. No Play Store, though.

Swampfoot

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Current Phone Model
Samsung Galaxy S6
My desktop rig is Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB. 24 gigs of RAM.

It's an original Motorola Verizon Droid with the slide-out keypad. No SIM card but I put in a 32gb MicroSD. I reset the Droid to factory defaults (2.2.3, Build FRK76) via recovery mode, set it up with a gmail account, which it can log into and get mail from (using the ancient version of Gmail on the phone), but it has the Market app.

Problem is, Market will not load, will not redirect me to download the Play Store, it just throws an error after doing the "Loading..." thing for 5 minutes or so. I've googled my arse off trying to find a way to get an app installation (an older version of the Play store APK) done without the app store, but have not been successful.

When I log into the Play Store on a desktop browser using the same account, it does not show the Droid as one of the devices associated with the account.

There is no file manager in the default installation of apps for me to even attempt to run an APK from the SD card. I don't know how to get a File Manager app onto it.

Maybe I should root it, but where would I find a ROM after such a long time?

I installed Android Studio but even that does not seem to recognize that the phone is hooked to the computer in USB file transfer mode. I have developer tools enabled and USB debugging enabled.

I've tried the Platform Tools "adb devices" list via the command line but the phone never appears in the list, no matter whether I enable USB debugging or not, whether I have USB file transfer mode enabled or not.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the USB driver from the Device Manager in Windows. Nothing helps.

Maybe this phone is just too far gone, too old to ever be used again? That'd be a shame because it'd be perfect for a security cam (assuming I can get an app for a phone this old).

Thanks for any advice.
 
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