Terra,
Do a search for something called the Bobo File Format, or BFF. What it does is export an entire scene into a Maxscript file. You can then go back in to an earlier version of max and run the created script and it will reproduce the scene. There is only one minor glitch: in the multi/sub material it adds one to each of the material IDs (its an easy fix, just go into the material editor and fix the ID assignments).