"Something akin to" is, I think, a pretty low bar. Admittedly, the balance of a 10 minute turn is a lot less resting than 5e's one hour. But it's still a rest, and it's still short. Some variant I vaguely recall even let that 'bind wounds' assumption heal d3 hps. Which, at 1st level, in particular, was nothing to sneeze at.
Nothing in AD&D had rules where you regained spells from a short rest.
Not spells in any standard class, now, but there were the occasional n/turn items or special abilities.
Or had the ability to engage in non-magical hit point recovery in a short rest. And AD&D not only did not have heal back to full on a long rest
Aside from the 'non magical' proviso, though, recovering hps between combat, and between forays into the dungeon /was/ a viable strategy, while waiting weeks to recover hps 'naturally' was pretty pointless. So the cadence was not that different, just the bookkeeping was more involved.
then that tells me your experience with AD&D was limited to the goldbox PC video games.
100% wrong. Never touched 'em. Actually played and ran AD&D, both eds, from '80 through '95. Sitting around resting for weeks to heal naturally, when your party /needed/ a cleric for both healing & turning, anyway, seemed pointless to every group I ever gamed with. I won't completely discount the possibility that there were groups out there who never had a cleric - actually, I won't challenge that claim when made by anonymous posters in an internet forum, because that'd be impolite.
You didn't sit around for 38 hours doing that in an actual AD&D TTRPG while on an adventure
Depends on how large & demanding the adventure you were grinding against was. If you couldn't tackle it in one 'day' and "went back to town" there was very little point in not doing a few re-memorization cycles to get everyone up to full hps and have a complete set of spells when you returned. It's not like there was a clear, universally applied limit on how often you could take that 4hr nap to get back low-level spells, for instance. Indeed, the classic game varied so much in how it was interpreted, modded, & actually run, that there's very little we /can/ authoritatively say about it.
That difference is not "moot". The rate is significantly different.
It's really not. 8hrs once in a 24hr period vs 4 up to 8 several times in succession, with extra memorization time is /mainly/ just less bookkeeping - but then, the bookkeeping was a lot more detailed in the olden days across the board. Accounting for spells, coin, gear, expendable items (from ammunition that you had a % chance of recovering, to potions to magic items with uncertain #s of charges), etc, all more detail than in the modern game.
Pointing out how you'd have to radically change the rest/recovery rules from 5e to OSR is a great point, because it's so radically different in how each edition handled them.
The meaningful impact is minimal. And, it's not like it's hard to change the rest/recovery period. The standard 8hr short rests, 1 week long variant, for instance, will get you a cadence not unlike the classic game, just still with less bookkeeping.
If you /want/ the greater detail, though, it impacts far more than just the rests, and I'd agree it makes very little sense to adapt a modern ed rather than dust off an older one & dig in.
