Resurrecting an old game controller

Anybody remember the old Spaceball Avenger? (I'll bet most of you don't, so here's a link to a very similar product that was made by the same people: http://www.mindflux.com.au/product [...] rb360.html ). Basically its a controller with 6 or seven buttons and a force-sensitive orb attached that can sense movement in any and all 6 degrees of freedom. It's quite old, and support for it is nonexistent nowadays. It connects via serial port (but serial to USB adapters do exist). The drivers that came with it absolutely do not work on anything made after the mid '90s. BUT, I've just started learning C++ this semester at school, and it struck me that with some research and a little help, I might be able to modify some sort of generic windows joystick driver so that it could recognize the spaceball and it's 6 axes of control.

Does this sound practical to the programmers out there? Keep in mind that I'm new at this, and I'm not sure exactly what would be involved. Some sort of template for generic human interface devices that I could modify to fit the specific inputs of this controller seems like it would be ideal, but I'm not really sure where to start looking. Is directinput the way to go? Any sort of advice that would get me going in the right direction would be appreciated.