MIDDAY MARKETS: Tech gridlock

Techs were standing still at midday Friday as they awaited the results of next week's Federal Reserve board meeting on interest rates. The Nasdaq rose 9.11 to 3,949.98 and the Dow Jones industrial average slipped 14.28 to 11,041.36.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 3 to 519.08.

On the IPO front, Integrated Telecom Express, Inc.,known as "ITeX" (Nasdaq: ITXI), a maker of integrated circuits for ADSL equipment, rose 2 11/16 to 20 11/16 in its debut. The companypriced its 5.6 million shares at $18 a piece, the middle of its price range.

Peco II (Nasdaq: PIII) bolted up 11 1/16 to 26 1/16 in its debut, and WJ Communications (Nasdaq: WJCI) priced its IPO, but had yet to open.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD), up 2 1/16 to 70 3/16, is close to announcing a 1.2GHz version of its Athlon microprocessor, as its most senior executive said the company's product rollout plans are running ahead of schedule. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 1 7/8 to 71 15/16 after positive comments from Merrill Lynch on chip stocks.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) fell 1 5/8 to 129 1/2 and AOL (NYSE: AOL) shed 3/16 to 55.

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) was up 3 7/16 to 122 7/8 after announcing a 2-for-1 stock split. Among other leading tech issues: Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) fell 15/16 to 70 5/8, IBM (NYSE: IBM) was down 15/16 to 121 9/16, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) was unchanged at 63 7/16 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) fell 13/16 to 83 1/8.