Yes, you can connect with older client tools but you'll experience
limitations in functionality. If you prefer older versions of client
tools then you might choose to use MDAC 2.5 or earlier to connect to
database instead of MDAC 2.6 which comes with SQL Server 2000 client
tools.
For example, MDAC 2.5 and earlier does not support named instances,
bigint datatype, or XML data.
Regards
Debashish