Win 98 password changes - Samba doesn't recognise data

[Ian Harris]

No, it's not a case of the password programs (ie, passwd) being incorrect at
the samba end, it's deeper than that - the smbd log says

[2000/03/13 12:50:34, 0] smbd/chgpasswd.c:check_oem_password(699)
  check_oem_password: incorrect password length (-1423948563).

So the actual data sent by win 98 appears to be unrecognised by Samba
(2.0.6).
We are running Win 98 second addition 4.10.2222 A.

Any help with this problem would be appreciated.
regards
Ian.