Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

hi,

i have an old dtxpress drum kit. i mostly use my laptop + a drum 
sampler called battery 3 to make drum tracks, though. my current midi 
controller is a cheap m-audio keyboard. while playing drums with your 
fingers is a whole lot of fun, what i wanted to know is whether or not 
i can hook up my dtxpress directly to my laptop and use it as a midi 
controller? (ie be able to play live on the drum kit, and have it send 
the correct midi messages to battery 3, letting me use their sound 
banks?)

i checked out the dtxpressions.com page and all the stuff i found on 
midi pertained to uploading kits and saving them on your computer. 
while this is promising, i'd like to know for sure i can do what i 
want before buying a midi-to-usb cable.

any advice/confirmation would be very greatly appreciated. also has 
anyone found a pdf version of the dtxpress manual? i'd love to run 
through that.