[Samba] name mangling makes 8.3 unreadable unlike Windows fileserver

[Kevin Field]

Hi,

I'm cross-posting here from serverfault.com in case anyone can help.  I 
just found a similar question on askubuntu.com also without an answer.

Switched recently from W2K3 to Samba4.0.9/CentOS6.4 for our fileshare 
for WinXP clients.

Have an ancient (1995!) piece of software that uses 8.3 filename format. 
After the switch, long filenames became useless in the context of the 
File->Open dialog box. Instead of the first few characters, we get maybe 
1 character the same if we're lucky, which in a directory of thousands 
makes it impossible to find. For example, instead of "S:\Air 
conditioning control system" becoming "S:\AIRCON~1" like it would 
before, it's displayed in this program as "S:\A51FHG~S".

In our directory of client identifiers with their contact names 
appended, formerly directory mangling would leave enough characters 
intact that client identifiers could still be used. Not anymore.

None of the settings in the docs seem to talk about this exact problem. 
In fact, they seem to show it the way we were used to. Our smb.conf 
doesn't use any of the settings because the defaults seem to be what we 
want, according to the docs. Any hints?

(If you want to answer on serverfault feel free: 
http://serverfault.com/questions/543320/samba-name-mangling-too-mangled-to-be-practical 
)

Thanks for any help,
Kev