Amaze/Delrina Daily Planner on Windows 10 and beyond...

[Krusch]

All,
I also love the Delrina Daily Planner, having received it in 1993, known then as the Amaze Daily Planner. My new wife (first and still) gave it to me as a first anniversary present. For the last year I have been searching for a way to run it on my new Dell XPS Windows 10 machine and have had no luck. I have tried the Windows Compatibility tool and it won't even touch the Daily Planner install.exe file or tell me what's wrong with it. Since 1993 I have run it on Windows 3.1, W95, W2000 and WXP. Once my last two XP machines die I will be without my Daily Planner which has been my favorite major resource for managing my life activities. The current crop of planners are just a calendar month page with little boxes to put stuff in; pathetically lame compared to the Daily Planner’s capabilities.

I now have 24 years of planner .dp files, containing history since 1993, and I hate the thought of losing access to that history. However, excavating through the web I have found three of the original Amaze staff and begged them to resurrect the Amaze Daily Planner to run on Windows 10 and beyond. Right now my latest contact today (October 16, 2017) says he will look into it but he’s busy with a new startup. There may be problems with finding the original source code and with the current owner of the product who has vehemently stated that they refuse to consider bringing the planner back.

Right now, I'd like to get a feel for how many people might be interested in resurrecting the Daily Planner to run on Windows 10 and beyond. Maybe popular demand would convince them to see it as a new, viable product. If they can bring Blade Runner back after 35 years why not the Daily Planner after only 24 years? At this point I have told them I'd pay $1,000 to get a planner that would move into the future as Microsoft advances their OS beyond W10 and would be able to open all my old .dp files. If we can demonstrate enough interest in bringing the Planner back they may feel some real encouragement to re-acquire the license to it and update the source code to work on the new Windows environments into the future. Best case we see a new Daily Planner 2017 hit the market. Please reply to: Jay Arthurs at (e-mail address removed).

Thanks. Jay

 

[Ian]

It would be a big task to make that software W10 compatible, so I wouldn't get your hopes up . It'll be a 16-bit application, which won't run on Windows 10, not matter how the compatibility settings are tweaked.

Why not try running it within a Virtual Machine on your Windows 10 PC? You can run a Windows XP instance on your W10 machine and launch the app direct from an icon on your desktop, as if it were a native app. I think VirtualBox can do this (but you'll need an XP license to visualise it):

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Alternatively, you could install an app called DosBox and then install Windows 3.1 within that... then you could have the same experience as 24 years ago on a Windows 10 machine. That may be the easiest way .

 

[Justin Metwo]

I also joined just to discuss the "out of date" Delrina Planner Group.
Good New & Bad News about Windows 10.
THE GOOD
If you have win 10 32 bit, the program will run just fine. Just copy the Planner file to the C:\
I made backup copies years ago but you can locate these files by searching on your still working ancient PC or backup.
You do not need to run the install if you have these files, just copy the folder. As to the issue of A:install I did not understand all the before posted stuff. I purchased a DataStation portable drive that reads as A: when you plug it into your PC its very inexpensive and allows all kinds of things to be plugged in.

THE BAD
I can not get it to run on a Windows 10 64 bit machine. Someone please tell me if you know how.
These are the files you need in your planner folder (or they are at lease in mine):
AMAZE.DLL
AMAZEEVT.DLL
AMAZEMST.INI
AMAZETP.DLL
AMAZINST.DLL
AMAZINST.INI
AMAZINST.MSI
AMZEANIM.DLL
AMZETHPL.DLL
AMZETHPL.TPI
AMZETOON.DLL
AMZETRIV.DL_
DPNATIVE.IE
DPNATIVE.IE_
DPTEXT.IE
DPWINFAX.IE
PLANNER.EXE
PLANNER.HLP
PLANNER.PRF
README.TXT
SAMPLE30.DP

I have my fingers crossed that I am not the last Delrina-souris dinosaur left alive.

 

[Al Kalar]

All,
I also love the Delrina Daily Planner, having received it in 1993, known then as the Amaze Daily Planner. My new wife (first and still) gave it to me as a first anniversary present. For the last year I have been searching for a way to run it on my new Dell XPS Windows 10 machine and have had no luck. I have tried the Windows Compatibility tool and it won't even touch the Daily Planner install.exe file or tell me what's wrong with it. Since 1993 I have run it on Windows 3.1, W95, W2000 and WXP. Once my last two XP machines die I will be without my Daily Planner which has been my favorite major resource for managing my life activities. The current crop of planners are just a calendar month page with little boxes to put stuff in; pathetically lame compared to the Daily Planner’s capabilities.

I now have 24 years of planner .dp files, containing history since 1993, and I hate the thought of losing access to that history. However, excavating through the web I have found three of the original Amaze staff and begged them to resurrect the Amaze Daily Planner to run on Windows 10 and beyond. Right now my latest contact today (October 16, 2017) says he will look into it but he’s busy with a new startup. There may be problems with finding the original source code and with the current owner of the product who has vehemently stated that they refuse to consider bringing the planner back.

Right now, I'd like to get a feel for how many people might be interested in resurrecting the Daily Planner to run on Windows 10 and beyond. Maybe popular demand would convince them to see it as a new, viable product. If they can bring Blade Runner back after 35 years why not the Daily Planner after only 24 years? At this point I have told them I'd pay $1,000 to get a planner that would move into the future as Microsoft advances their OS beyond W10 and would be able to open all my old .dp files. If we can demonstrate enough interest in bringing the Planner back they may feel some real encouragement to re-acquire the license to it and update the source code to work on the new Windows environments into the future. Best case we see a new Daily Planner 2017 hit the market. Please reply to: Jay Arthurs at (e-mail address removed).

Thanks. Jay

I too would like to see an upgrade of this easy-to-use package. The 1.1 version has a limited capacity for events (due to using just one "section" of memory because of coding problems with older operating systems) and when it fills up, it's often impossible to delete any old appointments to make it possible to add new ones (mine's frozen up at this time and I don't know how to fix it). Hopefully any new version would be able to import the old files, but into a larger partition.