I'm trying to figure out why the joystick.dll doesn't working with Smoothstepper, at least not for me. It's good to know that the Xbox controller does work. Do you know if the .dll source code is available? The joystick I bought is a 3 axis joystick (XY stick and knob turn for Z) with 12 buttons which I think is essentially the same as the joystick controller with a few more buttons.
http://www.chproducts.com/oem/finger_usb_desktop.html I can get it to work on the Parrallel Port with the joystick.dll plugin but not Smoothstepper.