ERROR 1117 "too many columns" in create stmt

[Stefan Röschinger]

I want to restore a sql dump from a server version 4.0.18 to a 4.1.12-standard.
One table contains around 1350 columns, half of them are blobs, text.
The create table statements replies error 1117 "too many columns" ?!

Source database is german_latin_1, dump file was converted with iconv to utf8
and restored to utf8 database;

Max number of columns per table should be 3398 ?!

I've searched for hours now, if it's a configuration issue, a bug
or any restrictions I haven't heard of.

Please do not discuss the table design, no way to change this ;)

Thanks for any help, Stefan.