I need to select the first 255 characters from a Long

[gandolf989]

I have a table as such

MYTABLE (
PKEY CHAR(10) NOT NULL,
MYCOMMENTS LONG NULL
)

I want the equivalent of the following
SELECT PKEY, SUBSTR(MYCOMMENTS, 255) FROM MYTABLE;

I realize that I can't use SUBSTR. I also can't use UTL_RAW or DBMS_LOB.

Does anyone have either a SQL or PL/SQL solution that will work in Oracle 8.1.7.3. The OS is Windows NT 4.0 SP6, not that it matters.

Thanks.