Hey @ggilrandy92!
Welcome to the Forum!
frankly, i do not enjoy scratch. but i’ve almost finished the week 0 project, so no more scratch for me after this hopefully. i’ve got this to do, and the responsive web design projects on code camp. and then i’m onto some (to me at least) more interesting projects. i’ve watched the week 1 lecture for cs50 last night and it was gripping, clearly i’m a programming geek.
i completely agree with what you’re saying & the consensus that C is somehow obsolete concerns me on many levels. my mother worked as a systems analyst from 1989 - 1995 though, and has been in IT systems ever since. my first program was built in DOS on a 1988 amstrad computer. i learned some html 10 years later in 1998 when internet was still on dial up.
therefore i possibly have more coincidental awareness of systems languages than some of the new gen. i do think this has aided my understanding slightly. however, the cs50 has helped me the most. having a basically accurate concept of what machine code is from day 1, i think is a big advantage for sure.
about C - i do want to learn this to a proficient standard, if i find i don’t progress well beyond the basics my fallback is python. however - i think i’d rather be proficient with C basics, as opposed to learning to do more in python for a similar time investment.
because as you say it’s underpinning awareness that helps, surely. i’m bracing myself for re-learning maths, however i’ve looked at basic algorithms and i quite like them.
Nice, my first computer was an Amstrad CPC 464. I did a little bit with BASIC on it but I wasn’t able to save the programs so it got pretty old losing everything when you powered it off. 
With the knowledge you already have I can see why Scratch might not be as useful to you as someone just starting out. But I think for new learners it’s a nice starting point.
I wouldn’t call it obsolete, C (or C++), and assembly is still used when performance is important. Low-level code is still needed for some tasks, like a video encoder for example.
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consensus was the wrong word, i should have said “misguided rumour” although it does seem to almost be a consensus in some circles, which brings me to my next point.
i’m a millennial, and finding out yesterday what the millennium bug comprised of, and to have it confirmed that yes there really was something going on. that was excellent. finding out that thing was 2 digit date counters being installed on computer hardware, and people having to work day & night to fix that problem, was even more excellent.
so, some of the relevance is clear - solutions for system limitations should be considered carefully…
i clicked the link, and frankly that computer still looks far more impressive than my ipad. i have a feeling its inner workings as you say, might be more basic than its shell! no saving things = torture really, however i still get confused by auto save even now, if i’m being honest. i don’t quite trust it unless there’s a button press involved.
one of my favourite things was an LED pac-man game with a joy stick. it was at my grandad’s house in approx 1992, and i haven’t seen it since sadly.
The Y2K bug definitely underlines the crazy expansion over time of not only transistor count but storage space (on disk and in memory). The fact that shaving off 2 digits was saving enough money (according to Wikipedia up to more than US$100 per kilobyte) that it was considered a solution is pretty mind-blowing when looking at the computing landscape of today.
I had a Packman game shaped as Packman (ish) and a Donkey kong mini arcade. I also got some handheld device, I think from Japan, where you could switch the game cartridge which was pretty wild at the time. The games sucked though as I remember it.
I do remember having this one, good times.
