Blender 2.49 is years old compared to 2.69, with all the changes that have happened, things that work between them is often lucky, not always expected.
You really should alter the 2.69 materials in 2.69 to get the results you want.
Just took a look at your .blend, had to go install 2.69 and fix my PYTHONPATH to get it to run… (I’ve been using 2.62) If you go to your node setup for your material, and connect your normal node to the lower one instead of the upper one, it works. I would have to look at your nodes and stuff, but this may be a bug in 2.69, or it may be expected behavior if those inputs have priority over each other somehow…
Woops, sorry for so many posts, just looked at the blend in 2.49, I guess you had the normal connected to BOTH normal inputs. Somehow one is just not connected in 2.69. Moving it to the bottom made it look closer (since the whole thing wasn’t highlighted) but if you just reconnect that missing one, it looks fine in 2.69.