Protocol mismatch in MySQL 4.1

My colleague asked me to connect to his remote MySQL database and check smth in it while he is off the office on a vacation. But i cannot even connect to it. Everytime i get an error: Error No. 2007 Protocol mismatch, Server Version = 9 Client Version = 10
I am quite sure the problem is in the different version of MySQL, but i have no possibility now to change the version. Even if i decide to do that, it is not going to be a quick process. What else can i do?