For anyone interested in this with the 990, 970, or 1070 remotes (or even the old 1050 remote, for that matter), it may be worth perusing a few sites:
Krisdz, you may have some other good links for stuff like this that would be good to throw out there. The biggest hurdle is to track down a cable. The last time I looked at JP1 much, most folks were still building their own cables. It looks like there are now some vendors selling good pre-made cables, even some USB cables.