Help needed getting forge to run

Hey everyone, first time poster here in need of some guidance. My new android phone recently broke so I'm forced to use an older tablet running android 4.1.2. I tried to update the system but it says its up to date which I know isn't right. I've tried downloading earlier versions of forge and I can Install fine, and I download the assets.zip and unzip it to the forge folder, but when I start the app it literally hangs forever saying "checking for updates" it will just stay on this screen indefinitely. Do any of you guys out there have any advice on how I can get this awesome app up and running? Thanks so much