If you have the schematic, you need to convert the DOS (SDT) schematic and libraries to a newer format. See the Protel knowledge base for the steps to take.
If you have them, fine. But often all you have is an old net list.
If you are trying to bring a raw ORCAD netlist into Protel99SE PCB, you aren't going to be able to do it.
Never say never. It's not as easy as one might like, but it is easier than it might seem.
If you think about it for a minute, you will realize that Protel has no information about the components named in the old ORCAD netlist. The footprint names in the Protel libraries are completely different from those used in the original ORCAD schematic from which the netlist was produced. Without translating the original schematic, and its associated libraries, there just isn't enough information.
I've done many such imports in the past. What I've done is to place the components manually, or I would bring them in automatically, all I needed to do was to extract the part section of the OrCAD list and substitute my footprint names. I did this practically every week at one time, it is not hard in a spreadsheet. Translating the net information from an OrCAD format net list is more complicated, but I didn't have to do that very often because the people supplying me with OrCAD data were instructed to provide me with the net list in Tango or Protel format. I still needed to substitute footprint names, it might take me 10 minutes on a modest-size board with common components. And for a component where I need to build the footprint, I would often just leave it the same. Made it easier the next time, since my library would match the footprint names in the source file. (I used to maintain customer libraries in Tango so it was easy to use those customer's net lists with little fuss.)
In another post I just detailed how to translate the OrCAD net information to Protel format.
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