Compiling tools under MSVC++ 7.0

I am using the MSVC++ 7.0 (.Net) compiler. Most of it compiles fine, a few warnings but nothing major, mostly signed/unsigned comparisons. Four of the projects will not compile successfully, however. They are the three Max exporters and the Milkshape exporter. The 3DS Max exporters all complain about a missing header file (ctl3d.h). I am assumming there is a .Net version of this header (since it is the header for 3D common controls), but I haven't looked for it since I don't have 3DS Max anyways. The Milkshape exporter has more problems. In DTSShape.cpp, around line 450, there is the following code...

std::string::const_iterator pos = mat->name.begin() ;
     while (pos != mat->name.end())
            out.write (pos++, 1) ;

It dies with the following error message, saying it cannot convert pos++ to a const char *. I am not sure why this is the case, since pos is a const_iterator over a std::string, it is in essence a const char *. I was able to fix the compile error by changing the section to

std::string::const_iterator pos = mat->name.begin() ;
while (pos != mat->name.end())
{
   out.write (&(*pos), 1) ; 
   pos++ ;
}

I don't like this, since if &(*pos) is a const char *, so is pos... Any suggestions here?

The olther problem is everywhere the std::vector::assign() method gets called (lots of places). Everytime, it is called with 1 parameter (always an int). std::vector::assign() should take two parameters (either void assign(size_type _Count, const Type& _Val) or template void assign(InputIterator _First, InputIterator _Last)). The documentation for this method under MSVC++ 6.0 is the same, so I don't see how it can compile correctly under MSVC++ 6.0, either... Looking at the code, it always goes like this...

nodes.assign(numNodes) ;
stream >> nodes ;
stream.readCheck(2) ;

My guess is that it is supposed to be creating a vector with enough memory allocated to hold numNodes Node classes? But then it only reads 1 node from the input stream into the vector? Anybody got a hint for me as to what it is doing here so I can try to fix it?

Thanks,
Jason